The tenement and tuberculosis : an address / by S. A. Knopf ; delivered before a conference held under the auspices of the Tenement House Committee, of the Charity Organization Society, New York, February 20, 1900.

  • Sigard Adolphus Knopf
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The tenement and tuberculosis : an address / by S. A. Knopf ; delivered before a conference held under the auspices of the Tenement House Committee, of the Charity Organization Society, New York, February 20, 1900. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    hear the rattling of sewing machines, suddenly interrupted by a terrible cough/ We halt and listen for a moment. Another cough of different pitch,, coming evidently from another person. We enter—again a different picture. The air is filled with dust and steam, the odor indiscribable. The room is filled with people ; an elderly man with dark features a velvet cap on his head, a wife, a son, a daughter-in-law, two young girls and a number of children, all in one room. The grown persons working over their machines or pressing garments with heavy flat-irons, the little ones playing on piles of cloth or unfinished clothing. These latter with the children playing about them are the mysterious agents which as newly made garments are not only capable of spreading tuberculosis, but are frequently the very medium whereby more acutely contagious diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, scarlatina, and measles are carried into the homes of the well-to-do. The description of the home we are visiting has already told you that we have before us a small sweat-shop. Without questioning we recog- nize in the young mother and in her unmarried sister the two coughers. We ven- ture to ask them as to their condition, but they tell us that they are well. One says she coughs only because she is going to become mother again, the other assures us she coughs only when she bends too intently over the machine or when the little ones raise too much dust. Both women are plainly in a state of evolution of pulmonary tuberculosis. Both expectorate freely, and, alas ! in- discriminately, spreading their disease among their own kin and others. They have not yet consulted a physician, they did not feel the need of one, and besides this, it takes time and money. They get occasionally some patent cough-mixture in the nearby drugstore. As a matter of course, these cases belong to the class of unreported ones. Should these people ever move before their cases become known to the board of health they would leave the germs of tuberculosis in every portion of the rooms, and the new occupants would have all possible chances to contract the disease. For you must know that tuber- culosis sputum retains its virulence in the dried state often for a long period of time, but especially so in places where fresh air and sunlight have little access. Ducor, quoted by Dr. Park of the New York Health Department in his recent book, relates an instance of a healthy family having been infected with tuberculosis from living in a room which had been occupied by a con- sumptive two years before, and on examining the sputum-stained wall-paper not only were tubercle bacilli found in it, but upon guinea-pigs being inocu- lated with scrapings from the walls they died of tuberculosis. We advise the two young women to call in a physician or to go to a dis- pensary, and urge them not to expectorate except into a vessel partially filled with water, and if this is impossible, owing to the crowded condition of their workshop, to use a small pocket flask for that purpose. We have one more family on our list which we desire to visit. Again a cough reechoing in the hallway which would guide us even did we not know where to go. This cough which is heard on nearly every floor, recalls to one's mind a hospital ward of consumptives. Our third visit leaves a less painful impression, for the rooms we enter are clean. The sufferer is a wid-