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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 164, 5 August 1909, Page 2

THE BAXE OF lIUAIAXITY. A vivid picture, showing how terrible a scourge i s humanity's deadliest enemy, consumption, was drawn ,-ecently by Mr. John Burns, President of the Local Government Board, when opening nn exhibition in London organised by the National Assnciation for the Prevention of Tuberculosis. Everv year. he sn j,| the world lost 5.000.000 ' men, women and children by it, while Great Britain alone lost 80,000. Worse still, there were in England and Wales 300,000 sufferers from consumption. London had 0170 deaths from the dreaded disease annually, or more than were caused b'v wounds in file whole three years and a quarter of the South African War. In Die hundred years that ended with the Battle of Waterloo, all the men killed m European ivars were fewer than those who died in three years from consumption and its attendant complaints in the Old World. Notwithstanding the improvement in Britain, tuberculosis was even now responsible for one death iii every eleven, Fifty-six of the victims were between 20 and 43 years of aw a period in which life should i )e at % prime physiologically and productively Ao wonder, remarked Air. Burns that 'lO per eent. of ISrituin's total pauperism was due to widows or orphans One widow in every three was in receipt of relict from either the Guardians or some thai liable association. Generally speaking, consumption is the child of poverty, ignorance, drink, and carelessness. The death rate from tht disease i;i London as a whole was IK ~o r !00 . 000 but only 78 in happy, prosperous, healthy Hanipstead. At the same time , " w 4 i,s '-' Finsbury, with its tenements of one and two rooms each, its low wages and irregular work. But , Germany, with all her progress, which ; he admire,! greatly, suffered more than Great Britain from tuberculosis Of every thousand German workmen between the ages of 25 and'4o who were mint for labor 348 were sufferers from tiiherculosK. Among the invalidity pensioners of Germany more than half were consumptives, while above 33 per cent of the people under the German Health Insurance Hoards and between the a"c of l.> and (lit were sufferers from th same disease. Air. Hums went on t ask: Why was London more aucccssfi: lian other great cities of the world i the light against consumptionV Alain] because of |,, r S y S t olll „f small house: She had only eight persons per housi «lnle Berlin had 77. Finsbury, Gin* {row. Berlin. Paris, and New York a proved that the one-room toneme'i ™ to haunt of disease. Whore "ere high, tood dear, wages buy wor ''regular, ami drinking prevalent, cor sumption found a 1,,,,,,,.,- hlmtill ground: but alcohol was i|,,. „,„,| ~ V.'"t «PM,| of all in pr, .aUing S '■■«™*e. I e hoped the day was not fa ■li.-tant when streams of water won! »>n along all,the street gutters ui-h and day. Windows and the roisters"o lire-places should be constantly op ei 1 lie fetish of the workman's' p a ] 0 "Ufflit.to be overthrow,,. Tie suffcre from it when he was a boy. it was museum for wax fruit, stuffed birds an '•lima dogs. „„d was sacred i« the hind lot I. (he insurance man, the undertake, and lie doctor-, pl iU ,, wilm chil(lr{l '••'red not enter, and even the father wa a trespasser. The parlor should be mi lo common ilail.v use. incrcasiii"- th s l >a ' ,( ' <»f the I ic ibv at least h„c c 0.,1 The fcaby's soother should 1, abolished. !,. was glad that Loudo; builders „„ longer erected houses wit basement rooms, and that cellar dwel ■»!!* were doomed, and he urged peopl to counteract U.e consumptive tendenc by making us, „f the parks and ope 1 spaces and recreation grounds. All Burns also dwelt „,„,„ (]„. „, oat „;„, or educating people to a sense of thei .icspniisilnlities in preventing the snreai of consumption. '