On the causes of the spread of pulmonary consumption and other tubercular diseases, and on the means which may be taken to prevent their dissemination / Eben. Duncan.

  • Duncan, Eben.
Date:
[1892]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the causes of the spread of pulmonary consumption and other tubercular diseases, and on the means which may be taken to prevent their dissemination / Eben. Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    leucocytes of non-consumptive families. I fear we shall never completely remove the inherited predisposing causes, but we can do much to modify them by attention to—(1) the proper use of calisthenics in childhood to develop the imperfect lungs; (2) by attention to the purity and abundance of the air in sleeping apartments. I strongly urge the parents in such families to cultivate the habit of sleeping with the upper sash of the bedroom window an inch down at the top, and the chimney left quite free from obstruction, so that there may be a free circulation of the pure and wholesome night air, which, in a city, is the purest air we ca11 breathe. In feeding their children, the greatest care should be taken to boil all the milk which they use, and to accustom them to overdone rather than underdone meat. There is no doubt that unboiled milk and insufficiently cooked flesh are a seiious danger to such persons. Children should also be enjoined to eat fat, which, as a rule, they object to. When they reach maturer years they should choose an occupation which leads them into the open air, and, if it is possible, they should avoid large towns, and endeavour to live in an isolated, sparsely populated district, where they will be less likely to come into frequent contact with men and animals suffering from tuberculosis. If we could isolate consumptive families in such a way that they would never breathe tubercular dust or eat tubercular food, they would be absolutely safe from the danger of tubercular disease. 2. The breathing of impure air as a result of insufficient air- space and of insufficient removal of the products of respiration, transpiration, and combustion.—The evidence that, on the large scale, this is the chief cause predisposing to tubercular disease is most abundant. A consideration of the facts on record has led me to form the opinion that the contagiousness or the non-contagiousness of pulmonary consumption varies in direct ratio to the amount of air-space and of free ventilation of air in the dwellings of the people. Taking the factor of cubic space alone, Dr. Guy, many years ago, calculated that among 10.000 letterpress printers, in a work-room with air-space amounting to 800 cubic feet per man, 400 would die annually from consumption; while, of 10,000 men working in rooms with an air-space of less than 500 cubic feet per man, 1,200 would die in the same time— that is to say, as 3 to 1. The experience of barracks and prisons tells the same story. Previous to the inquiry of the Army Sanitary Commission in 1858, the cubic space per soldier in the barracks
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