THE WAIMATE ADVERTISER. TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1902. CONSUMPTIVE HOSPITALS.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 199, 6 May 1902, Page 2

THE WAIMATE ADVERTISER. TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1902. CONSUMPTIVE HOSPITALS.

For a number of years past the possibility of arresting the spread of consumption has engaged the attention of medical men and the' thinking public. Everyone has known for long that this disease of the temperate zones has been strengthening its hold on our population, and everyone knows, or ought to know, that its chief method of propagation is by means of microbe laden dust inhaled in houses where sufferers live, or even in the streets where they have expectorated. It is largely to prevent this danger to the public health that the city municipalities of New Zealand have made by-laws against expectorating on the public streets, and are taking steps to enforce due compliance with such enactments. And the question has also arisen in Waimate in connection with the desire of the Hospital Board for an annexe to the hospital, so as to allow of the treatment of local sufferers from this dread disease. The Tknaru central Board, true to its conservative policy where Waimate is concerned, refused to allow (be vote, but as tins alone is not sufficient to throw out the scheme, but must be backed up by an explanation to the ColoniaPTrear.snreiv of the reasons for such refusal, it is possible that more ’-v heard on the matter, the

Board of Trustees being determined to assert tboir rights and to study the pmssing needs of the district. But tho fact of lie Hospital Trustees being in favour of such an innovation does not

commend it to some of our local wiseacres. They argue that the fact of establishing a hospital for consumptives means the decimation of this town’s inhabitants. They forget the simple fact that instead of (as at present) being allowed to walk about tho streets and expectorate ; instead of living in a private home with five or six healthy persons and assisting these to contract the disease, so that each in his turn is a central source of danger to five or six others, the sufferers will be isolated and danger from them reduced to a minimum. To say for a moment that this would involve more danger to the town than the present lack of regulations, when a thousand consumptives might live in it and walk its streets unchecked, is to display n, hick of reasoning power ths-.t is absolutely distressing. We fully admit the danger that menaces a town blessed with a climate adapted for sufferers from lung complaints, and are strongly of opinion that “prevention is better than cure,” more especially when only a very temporary “euro” is possible, as is the case with this disease. Let us recognise the danger and wisely take steps to oppose it by placing the present patients under proper conditions of living—conditions which are at present far beyond their reach—and we may in time stay the course of the disease instead of adding our quota to the all too large number who yearly march with painful slowness or amazing swiftness to the grave

through its agency. It is a strange thing that no one questions the necessity for isolating patients suffering from typhoid fever, although this disease is not contracted from the patients save by two or three sources requiring only common sense in evading thorn, and yet with a disease whose hold on the system it is almost impossible to loosen the public display a recklessness that is as remarkable as it is painful to contemplate. To argue that a place of isolation (a place where every ofiort can be made to prevent the spread of infection) is

likely to propagate consumption, and that the indiscriminate presence of consumptives among a healthy population ia a,tit and proper thing, ought surely to be a sufficient qualification for residence with the mentally unsound. There, at least, the opinions of these objectors would be valued hr they deserve.