Licence: In copyright
Credit: The evolution of life / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![systemic infection, hard to be believed ; and ulti- mately requires agencies for waking the tubercle Bacilli into activity, just such as I suppose may be adequate for calling them into being—namely, mal- nutrition and conditions of lowered vitality, howso- ever produced : though among such factors impure air and inadequate or improper food must take an important place. But in accordance with the view favoured by me, as to the frequent origin of the tubercle Bacillus by transformation of common Bacilli constantly gaining access to the body, we might return to something more like the doctrine that prevailed concerning the etiology of phthisis only a few years ago, when the affection was freely recognised as generable in the individual, altogether apart from contagion, and contagion was supposed to take only a limited share in the production of the disease. This seems the more rational and most warranted view to take. It is one .which would tend to lay stress upon the need for prevention as well as cure, but it would not encourage the view that the disease could be exter- minated, or even very largely diminished, by the provision of' sanatoriums' and by efforts to minimise the risk of contagion [—all important as these un- doubtedly are]. I merely mean to imply that, in my opinion, contagion is as much over-rated as genesis is under-rated, and that our notions concern- ing prevention must not be too much centred upon the mere elimination of contagion. As Professor Hueppe says, the resisting power of a population can change according to the social conditions. If](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22651020_0359.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
