ranged to admit fresh air by a
specially devised window tent.

Educational campaigns have been vigorously prosecuted for the past ten
years, and gradually through the world is spreading a growing
appreciation of the dangers of this disease. The effect of this
increasing knowledge is reflected by a continually decreasing number of
deaths in proportion to the population. The following diagram (Fig. 76)
shows how this law is obeyed in New York State, the downward tendency of
the line since 1890 being very plainly marked.

[Illustration: FIG. 75.--Outdoor sleeping porch for tuberculosis
patients.]

The results being so manifest, the prophecy of Dr. Biggs of New York,
written in 1907, is certainly justified:--

"In no other direction can such large results be achieved so certainly
and at such relatively small cost. The time is not far distant when
those states and municipalities which have not adopted a comprehensive
plan for dealing with tuberculosis will be regarded as almost criminally
negligent in their administration of sanitary affairs and inexcusably
blind to their own best economic interests."

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--Mortality from pulmonary tuberculosis. Deaths
per 100,000 population.]

_Pneumonia.--The germ._

In New York State in the year 1908, the largest number of deaths from
any specific disease was due to consumption, the number of deaths in the
rural population alone being 2906. The next largest number of deaths in
the rural communities, and always a close second to consumption, was
from pneumonia, the number being 2191; so that pneumonia justly ranks as
highly important in the list of diseases which are at present most
deadly in their effect on the human race and against which a vigorous
fight should be made.

While pneumonia, like tuberculosis, is due to the action of a specific
organism, the germ itself is not so generally infectious; that is, the
germ has not the power of remaining vigorous when out of the human body
in the same way as has the germ of consumption. Like tuberculosis, the
germ is expectorated and remains virulent when dried into dust, but the
germ is much more sensitive to temperature changes and does not live
longer than two or three hours when dried and exposed to the sun. It is,
very curiously, a normal resident in the mouths of at least one third of
all healthy persons, and it is only necessary for the body of these
persons to become weakened for the germ to be able to secur