FACTS ABOUT TUBERCULOSIS
Tuberculosis, or consumption, is a disease of poor air, dusty quarters, insufficient nourishment, and, above all, of ignorance with regard to its dangers and what we now know of the possibilities of its cure. The more we know about it the better chance there is to cure it, and better still, prevent it.
Not very long ago the death rate from consumption was one in six, that is, every sixth person who died in this country died as a result of tuberculosis in some form. It is now about one in eight. This is a remarkable decrease—about one-third of its former ratio of victims are now spared. Not so very long ago the disease was regarded as practically fatal; now it is classified as one of the eminently curable diseases. The universal dissemination of this knowledge will do much to rob the "Great White Plague" of its terrors.
Investigation and observation have demonstrated that there is in the great majority of people a definite tendency successfully to throw off the disease. It is a curious and astonishing fact, which we have learned from the study of the results of autopsies; we find, in nearly every instance, that every person in whom death occurred after thirty had had consumption at one time and resisted it and died of some other disease. We mean by this that at some time, in all likelihood during one of the "colds" of childhood, every one of us contracted consumption, but because of our vitality we successfully resisted and conquered it. In other words, the white blood cells won their fight.
This knowledge is of great value; it taught the scientists who were studying the characteristics of the disease that there were conditions, possible of attainment, under which the human organism could definitely and victoriously defeat the invasion of the tubercle bacilli.
The public mind, until recently, was imbued with the fallacy that the disease was hereditary. It was thought that if it "ran in the family" the victims of it were almost certain to die. We know definitely now that consumption is not hereditary, and that, instead of death being certain in a patient in whose family it has been, this fact alone ensures the victim a much better prospect of cure than if it had never existed in the family. The explanation of this seeming paradox is quite logical from a medical standpoint. The theory of the vaccine treatment of disease is that if you infuse into the blood the products of the germs of certain diseases, the individual in whose blood the vaccine has been put, will wholly resist that particular disease, or if he acquires it, it will be in a mild and more modified form. If a family for a number of generations has had various members die of tuberculosis, the blood stream of the family will have become so impregnated with the toxins, or poisons, of the disease, that, in time, a certain immunity will have been established. Consequently, tuberculosis in an individual, the blood of whose ancestors has been accustomed or habituated to the poison of the disease, will run a milder course, be more modified in its type, and will respond to treatment easier than in an individual whose family history is free from the taint of tuberculosis.
In proof of this principle, it is a well-known fact that consumption runs a rapid, fatal course among those nations which have not hitherto been exposed to it. The death rate among our American Indians when it was first introduced among them was enormous.
The same truth applies to syphilis. The blood of the civilized race has become so thoroughly syphilized, that it is no longer so susceptible to the disease as it once was: and the disease as we know it to-day does not manifest the same virulency as it did years ago, or as it does in a race in whom it is grafted for the first time.
These ideas of the curability of the disease and of its non-heredity are extremely important and supremely suggestive. Tuberculosis takes only the quitters and the supine. Anyone who will fight bravely against the disease can always resist its ravages for many years, if not to the extent of living out a normal life.
The Tendency to Disease.—Mothers should understand just what is meant by "the tendency to disease." We assert that consumption is not hereditary, but we know that certain individuals are born with the tendency to tuberculosis. Just what does this mean?