The action of the Health Department in relation to pulmonary tuberculosis and the scope and purpose of the measures recently adopted for its prevention : a report of the Board of Health of the City of New York to Hon. William L. Strong, Mayor of the City of New York.

  • New York (N.Y.). Board of Health
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The action of the Health Department in relation to pulmonary tuberculosis and the scope and purpose of the measures recently adopted for its prevention : a report of the Board of Health of the City of New York to Hon. William L. Strong, Mayor of the City of New York. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ceiving into the body the living germs that have come from some other human being,-or animal, affected with the disease. It has been abundantly established that the disease may be trans- mitted by meat or milk from tubercular animals. The milk glands in milch cows often become affected with the disease when their lungs are involved, and the milk from such animals may contain the living germs, and is capable of producing the disease. Among stall-fed dairy cows 20 or 30 per cent, are sometimes found to be affected with the disease. Tubercular animals are also frequently killed for food ; their flesh some- times contains the germs, and if not thoroughly cooked is capable of transmitting the disease. Boiling the milk or thoroughly cooking the meat destroys the germs. Although the meat and milk from tubercular animals constitute actual and important sources of danger, the disease is acquired, as a rule, through its communication from man to man. Tuberculosis is commonly produced in the lungs (which are the organs most frequently affected) by breathing air in which the living germs are suspended as dust. The material which is coughed up, some- times in large quantities, by persons suffering from consumption contains these germs, often in enormous numbers. This material when expecto- rated frequently lodges in places where it afterward dries, as on the streets, floors, carpets, clothing, handkerchiefs, etc. After drying, in one way or another, it is very apt to become pulverized and float in the air as dust. It has been shown experimentally that dust collected from the most varied points, in hospital wards, asylums, prisons, private houses, etc., where consumptive patients are present, or have been present, is capable of producing tuberculosis in animals when used for their inoculation. Such dust may retain for weeks its power of producing the disease. On the other hand, dust collected from rooms in institutions or houses that have not been occupied by tubercular patients does not produce the disease when used for the inoculation of animals. These observations show that where there are cases of pulmonary tuberculosis, under ordinary conditions, the dust surrounding them often contains the tubercle bacilli, and persons inhaling the air in which this dust is suspended may be taking in the living germs. It should, however, be distinctly understood that the breath of tuberculosis patients, and the moist sputum, received in proper cups, are not elements of danger, but only the dried and pulverized sputum. The breath and moist sputum are free from danger, because the germs are not dislodged from moist surfaces by currents of air. If all discharges were destroyed at the time of exit from the body, the greatest danger of communication from man to man would be removed. It then follows, from what has been said, that tuberculosis is a dis- tinctly preventable disease. It is a well-known fact that some persons, and especially the members of certain families, are particularly liable to tuberculosis, and this liability can be transmitted from parents to children. So marked and so frequent
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