r of human life, causing one-seventh of all deaths,
but because, so far from being a surely fatal disease as popularly
believed, it is an eminently curable disorder if recognized in its
earliest stage. The most careful laboratory examinations of bodies
dead from other causes, show that very many people have had
tuberculosis at some time, and to some extent, during life. The reason
why the disease fails to progress in most persons is that the system
is strong enough to resist the inroads of the disease. The process
becomes arrested by the germs being surrounded by a barrier of healthy
tissue, and so perishing in their walled-in position. These facts
prove that so far from being incurable, recovery from consumption
frequently occurs without even our knowledge of the disease. It is
only those cases which become so far advanced as to be easily
recognized that are likely to result fatally. Many more cases of
consumption are now cured than formerly, because exact methods have
been discovered which enable us to determine the existence of the
disease at an early stage of its development.

Consumption is due to the growth of a special germ in the lungs. The
disease is contagious, that is, it is capable of being communicated
from a consumptive to a healthy person by means of the germs present
in the sputum (expectoration) of the patient. The danger of thus
acquiring the disease directly from a consumptive is slight, if one
take simple precautions which will be mentioned later, except in the
case of a husband, wife, or child of the patient who come in close
personal contact, as in kissing, etc. This is proved by the fact that
attendants in hospitals for consumptives, who devote their lives to
the care of these patients, are rarely affected with consumption. The
chief source of danger to persons at large is dust containing the
germs derived from the expectoration of human patients, and thus
finding entrance into the lungs.

Consumption is said to be inherited. This is not the case, as only
most rarely is an infant born actually bearing the living germs of the
disease in its body. A tendency to the disease is seen in certain
families, and this tendency may be inherited in the sense that the
lung tissue of these persons possesses less resistance to the growth
of the germ of consumption. It may well be, however, that the children
of consumptive parents, as has been suggested, are more resistant to
the disease through inherited immun