Items Concerning Tuberculosis
THE Press Service of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis declares that consumption among Japanese laborers is increasing to such a degree that figures are becoming a source of anxiety to Japanese merchants and officials. A large percentage of laborers who are sent back to Japan by the Japanese Charity Association are consumptives. The claim is that there is a lack of hospital accommodations in the Japanese labor camps. In the United States there are 298 sanatoria, 222 dispensaries, 290 associations for the treatment or prevention of tuberculosis, while there are 600,000 cases of this disease in the country. The United States Conservation Commission estimates that this country loses annually one billion dollars from preventable tuberculosis. The special attention given to tuberculosis the last few years demonstrates clearly that consumption can be permanently cured. In some cases as high as seventy-five per cent have continued, four years after treatment, to improve and have returned to their regular occupations. An awful condition exists in Edinburgh, Scotland, among the children. One physician recently stated that out of one thousand city children three years of age examined by him, 647 had tuberculosis in some form. It is stated that owing to the studious habits and lack of proper physical exercise, Chinese students in this country and in the home land are especially liable to tuberculosis. One little item declares that “consumption is caused by the poisonous germs in the consumptive’s spit. The poisonous spit dries and goes as dust into other people’s lungs. A little poisonous spit when scattered in dust is enough to infect dozens of people. That is why careless spitting is not only dirty, but dangerous.”