COST OF CONSUMPTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3050, 21 November 1908, Page 3

COST OF CONSUMPTION.

'YEARLY LOSS TO AMERICA. "Startling statistics were presented | to the International Congress on Tuberculosis in Washington on Tuesday, September 29th, by Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale University, who estimated that 5,000,000 people now living in the United States are doomed tu death from consumption •unless radical remedial measures are .adopted. The object of the professor s arguments was to illustrate the folly of the country in refusing to recognise the economic necessity of spending gigantic sums in fighting the disease. -Consumption, he said, killed 138,000 people in America and cost the nation over £200,000,000 yearly. The death roll from tuberculosis was equal to .those of typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria, appendicitis, meningitis, •diabetes, small-pox, and cancer together. . .. , . Moreover, on an average it tooK each patient three years to die, during which, the victim was able to earn little or nothing. The disease, rtoo, usually attacked young men and women at the very time they '•were beginning to earn money. The minimum cost of such items as ■ doctor's bills, medicines, nursing, and loss of earnings before death was £4BO, which, with the destruction of potential earning power, brought the total of each case to '£1,600. Half this cost generally fell •on the victims themselves, but the cost to others was over £88,000,000 a year. Therefore, the professor argued, it would be wise economy for the community to invest a million vpounds in fighting the disease instead of the fraction of 1 per cent, of that , amount which is now expended.