Prevention of pulmonary tuberculosis / report by County Medical Officer of Health.

  • Staffordshire (England). County Council
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Prevention of pulmonary tuberculosis / report by County Medical Officer of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tubercular, concerning which there may be room for difference of opinion, it is important for our present purpose to remember that pulmonary tuberculosis differs from other tubercular diseases in two respects—first, as regards age incidence, and, secondly, as regards the channel by which the disease is conveyed. While other tubercular diseases prevail mostly among children, the pulmonary affection is most prevalent among adults, and, while food, in all probability, plays an important part in the causation of the former, the cause of the latter, in the majority of cases, at any rate, is the direct introduction of the materus morbi into the lungs by means of the air breathed. While drawing this distinction, however, I would point out that the chief pre¬ disposing causes in all tubercular diseases are identical, namely, poverty and general insanitary conditions. Dealing, then, with pulmonary tuberculosis only, the extreme importance of the question at once becomes apparent from a glance at the Registrar General’s returns, which show that at the present time no fewer than 42613* persons die annually from that cause in England and Wales, and that these deaths represent about one-fifth of the deaths from all causes occurring among persons between the ages of 15 and 55 years. In this County, excluding County Boroughs, I find from my returns that the mean annual number of deaths from this disease during the past ten years was 805. I regret to say I cannot give any figures to show how the deaths compare with the number of persons actually suffering from the disease, but it has been estimated that the mean duration of illness, terminating in death, is from two to three years, so that there are in the Administrative County (including unrecognised cases which recover) probably no less than 2000 sufferers, most of whom, in all probability, are incapacitated from work, off and on, during one half the period of their illness. Irrespective, then, of the suffering which this involves, not only to the patient, but also to the family should he be the bread winner, the direct monetary loss which such illness and death * Mean for ten years ending 1900,