Tubercular pregnant women also show no little tendency to abort. P. 316.
TUBERCULOSIS A PREVENTABLE AND CURABLE DISEASE. S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D.; Professor of Phthisio-therapy at the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital; Associate Director of the Clinic for Pulmonary Disease of the Health Department; Attending Physician to the Riverside Sanitorium for Consumptives of the City of New York, etc. Moffat Yard & Co., 1909. New York.
We have emphasized the fact that tuberculosis is very rarely directly hereditary, but that what is often transmitted by tuberculous parents is a weakened system, or physiological poverty. Nevertheless it is evident that tuberculous individuals ought not to marry, and when tuberculosis develops in a married couple it is best that they should have no children. P. 354.
PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS. Its Modern Prophylaxis and the Treatment in Special Institutions and at Home. S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D. P. Blakiston’s Sons & Co., Phil., 1899.
If conception has taken place in a tuberculous woman institute treatment, preferably in a sanatorium near the home of the patient. But as Treaudeau says, it is essential that the treatment be continued for a long time afterwards, and I should like to add that a repetition of pregnancy must be prevented. P. 283.
THE TUBERCULOSIS PROBLEM AND SECTION 1142 OF THE PENAL CODE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D. Reprinted from the New York Medical Journal for June 12th, 1915.
There seems to be no difference of opinion in the minds of men and women who have studied rational eugenics and sociology concerning the necessity of beginning to work with the preceding generation, and of teaching parents that quality is better than quantity, and that a large number of children, underfed or of mental, moral and physical inferiority, means race suicide, while the reverse means race preservation.
I cannot defend my attitude better than by telling you the conclusions I have arrived at in my study of the tuberculosis situation in the United States. In the families of the poor where there are usually numerous children, it really matters little whether it is the father or the mother who is acutely tuberculous. Since almost invariably they live in close and congested quarters, are underfed and insufficiently clad, it is of relatively rare occurrence when most of the children do not become infected with tuberculosis. In some of our tuberculosis clinics where we insist on an examination of all the children of the tuberculous parents visiting these special dispensaries, we find as many as fifty per cent. of the children to be afflicted with tuberculosis as the result of postnatal infection. In taking the history of a patient in my private consultation work, it is my invariable custom to ask whether he comes from a large family, and if so whether he was among the first or latter born children. As a rule, especially among the poor, it proves to be one of the latter born, (the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, etc.) who contracts tuberculosis, and I believe this to be because when he came to the world there were already many mouths to feed and food was scant, for the father’s income rarely increases with the increase of the family; and the mother, worn out with repeated pregnancies, cannot bestow upon the latter born children the same care which was bestowed upon the first. We know tuberculosis to be a preventable and curable disease, but we also know that it is the disease of poverty, privation, malnutrition, and bad sanitation. P. 4.
I do not know the penalty to be visited upon a physician who offends the majesty of the law as set forth in section 1142 of the penal code, but I for one am willing to take the responsibility before the law and before my God for every time I have counselled, and every time I shall counsel in the future, the prevention of a tuberculous conception, with a view to preserving the life of the mother, increasing her chances of recovery, and, last, but not least, preventing the procreation of a tuberculous race. P. 5.
THE SEXUAL LIFE OF WOMAN IN ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND HYGIENIC ASPECTS. E. Heinrich Kisch, M.D., Professor of the German Medical Faculty of the University of Prague; Physician to the Hospital and Spa of Marienbad; Member of the Board of Health, etc. Translated by M. Eden Paul, M.D. Rebman Co., New York.