TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9528, 28 June 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

WAR AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS

The "Metropolitan Magazine" of New York contains an article entitled "The War on the White Death." The writer lays great stress upon the loss occasioned to the State by premature deaths due to consumption. The estimates as to the net cost to the union by tuberculosis vary from 24 to 26 millions sterling per annum. There are, it is said, 200,000 deaths from tuberculosis in the United States annually. The average age at time of death is 35 vears. The normal life would go on for 32 years longer, or until the 67th year. The State .Charities Aid Association of New York calculates that "the average'loss to the community by the death from tuberculosis of a wageearning male is about £1,600." However widely at variance these estimates may be, the one fact we cannot get away fr>m is that tuberculosis i 3 costly almost beyond imagination, lavish of life beyond endurance, and tenacious of purpose-to-kill beyond any other disease in proportion to the population. The writer mentions that negroes and Red Indians are much more liable to tuberculosis than white men, A Red Indian-or a Maori, for that matter —although he is an "open-air" citizen, is three times as likely as a white man to have, tuberculosis. At the other exreme is the Jewish race.