Value of family history and personal condition in estimating a liability to consumption.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Value of family history and personal condition in estimating a liability to consumption. 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.

    14/28 page 12
    deaths from consumption reaches the maximum, and at the earlier ages far exceeds that of any other group. The death of both parents has been considered to indicate such an extreme danger of taint in the descendants, as to be generally a bar to insurance. Consequently, we find in our records only seven of this class, who were probably accepted as exceptions to the general rule on account of extremely favorable conditions of age, physique and habits. The appearance of consumption in two genera- tions is also considered very unfavorable, but, probably owing to extreme care taken in the examination and selection of applicants with this history, our experience has been very favorable. The subdivision showing a record of parent and brother or sister gives the very smallest percentage of consumption of any class with tainted family record, equal in fact to the general class with no taint. The total number in this subdivison is not large, and the results therefore may be accidental; but I believe that special care in selection, in view of the recog- nized danger of family predisposition, has had a decided influence in effecting the favorable results. This leads naturally to the second point for investiga- tions, namely, whether favorable personal conditions may not equalize or even overbalance unfavorable conditions of family predisposition. The record of a death from consumption establishes a presumption that the other members of the family have a predisposition to, and an
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3