The prevention of consumption : a mode of prevention founded on a new theory of the nature of the tubercle-bacillus / by C. Candler.

  • Candler, C.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The prevention of consumption : a mode of prevention founded on a new theory of the nature of the tubercle-bacillus / by C. Candler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    64/292 (page 52)
    this view and the other views of Dr. Budd. The evidence he has put together completely rebuts Dr. Budd's case; but it may be remarked that a knowledge of accidental parasitism and of the chemical effects of light on the bacillus- vegetation would have simplified matters. For the phe- nomena of the occurrence of phthisis amongst all the different races referred to by Dr. Andrew will be perfectly apprehended by the view of an artificially created bacillary malaria in the dwelling-places of natives of all parts of the world—a local malaria, the existence, extent, and potency of which are dependent on several conditions, but are very largely governed by chemical light. For instance, Dr. Rush's graphic summary, quoted in the Lecture, of the incidence of consumption in North America may, with the key, be interpreted without the necessity for assuming the agency of hereditary tendency in the persons infected. The conditions indicated by Dr. Rush point clearly to their having been implicated through a local bacillary malaria engendered in the shade. Again, the singular immunity of the negro race in one place and its marked susceptibility at another, alluded to by Dr. Andrew, is seen to depend on their huts or lodgments; and although it might not be possible for the distant etiologist to lay his finger on the precise cause of the differentiation in all cases, the barracks of the West Indian soldiers stationed on the Gold Coast fix it plainly in their case ; for the dormitories in barracks are always indicated when soldiers of any nation suffer from l)hthisis. With regard to the consumption among the Melanosians, its cause is glaring. In the training establish- ment on Norfolk Island, where, Dr. Andrew mentions, about a hundred and fifty young natives stay for one or two years to qualify as teachers, these youths abandon their own native di'<;sH, or undress I'ather, and take to Kiiro])oan or some kin<l of clothing; and this involves the discontinuance of