The Tuberculosis Nurse (Classic Reprint): Her Function and Her Qualifications; A Handbook for Practical Workers in the Tuberculosis Campaign - Softcover

Excerpt from The Tuberculosis Nurse: Her Function and Her Qualifications; A Handbook for Practical Workers in the Tuberculosis Campaign

On the other hand are those who direct their efforts towards cultivating the soil. Reliable studies inform us that ninety per cent. Of the human race is tuberculosis infected, and that infec tion occurs at a very early age, so that at twelve years few children have escaped it. Relatively a small number of those infected subsequently be come tuberculous, so that something more than infection is necessary for tuberculosis to develop.

What this something is we do not know. Time, manner, frequency, and intensity of infection play an important part. Apparently too there is a wide personal variation in susceptibility. To just what this personal factor is due we are not in a position to say, but certain general facts known about the distribution of tuberculosis afford us a clue to its interpretation. Tuberculosis, like most infectious diseases, thrives under the conditions that poverty induces. Inadequate housing facili ties, insufficient food, filth, and sordid care are a few of these. If, as all must admit, the tubercle bacillus is more or less ubiquitous and few escape contact with it, then an important part of our campaign of prevention will be the raising of personal resistance so that when infection occurs it may be successfully overcome. Here is the field for wide social activity. Everything that makes for higher standards of living and for improved personal hygiene is a valuable arm against tuber culosis. Housing laws, child-labour laws, the wage question, municipal recreation centres, the liquor question, social service in all its departments, vaca tion lodges, open-air schools, factory inspection, and so on and so on, are all indirectly valuable anti tuberculosis agitation.

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