g and conclusive
practical result, that scarcely a single case is on record of the
transmission of this disease to a nurse, a physician, or a servant, or
other employee in an institution for its cure.

There is absolutely no rational basis for this panic-stricken dread of
an intelligent, cleanly consumptive, or for the cruel tendency to make
him an outcast and raise the cry of the leper against him: "Unclean!
Unclean!"

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that consumption is transmitted _by
way of the floor_; and if this relay-station be kept sterile there is
little danger of its transmission by other means.

Practically all that is needed to break this link is the absolute
suppression of what is universally and overwhelmingly regarded as not
merely an unsanitary and indecent, but a filthy, vulgar, and disgusting
habit--promiscuous expectoration. There is nothing new or unnatural in
this repression, this _tabu_ on expectoration. In fact, we are already
provided with an instinct to back it. In every race, in every age, in
every grade of civilization, the human saliva has been regarded as the
most disgusting, the most dangerous and repulsive of substances, and the
act of spitting as the last and deepest sign of contempt and hatred; and
if directed toward an individual, the deadliest and most unbearable
insult, which can be wiped out only by blood. Primitive literature and
legend are full of stories of the poisonousness of human saliva and the
deadliness of the human bite. It was the "bugs" in it that did it. It is
most interesting to see how science has finally, thousands of years
afterward, shown the substantial basis of, and gone far to justify, this
instinctive horror and loathing.

Not merely are the fluids of the human mouth liable to contain the
tubercle bacillus, and that of diphtheria, of pneumonia, and half a
dozen other definite disorders, but they are in perfectly healthy
individuals, especially where the teeth are in poor condition, simply
swarming with millions of bacteria of every sort, some of them harmless,
others capable of setting up various forms of suppuration and septic
inflammation if introduced into a wound, or even if taken into the
stomach. Even if there were no such disease as tuberculosis a campaign
to stamp out promiscuous expectoration would be well worth all it cost.

Of course, as a counsel of perfection, the ideal procedure would be
promptly to remove each consumptive, as soon as disc