Is consumption contagious? : and can it be transmitted by means of food?

  • Clapp, Herbert C. (Herbert Codman), 1846-
Date:
1882
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Is consumption contagious? : and can it be transmitted by means of food?. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    vice versa. The direct aspiration of organic particles is supposed to transmit the disease. That such deaths do occur is indubitable ; but in some instances careful inquiry shows the putative victim of infection was already tuberculous at the time of marriage, or that he sprang of a more or less thoroughly phthisical stock. The converse cases, long since insisted on by Portal, where a husband has had two or even three wives successively destroyed by phthisis, himself wholly escaping, are too frequently lost sight of. Again, the circumstances which bring on the dis- ease in one predisposed person are likely enough to bring it on in another; and, it must be remembered, husband and wife are in great measure exposed to anti-hygienic influences of the same classes and of the same activity. There is, besides, the statistical argument, which has never, that I am aware of, been seriously examined. What are the chances that a given individual, either actually phthisical or manifestly fated to become so, will unite with a consort similarly conditioned ? The answer will vary with locality, walk of life, and, above all, the age of the contracting persons ; but the chances would, I feel positive, be considerable, if the union took place within the period of existence at which tubercle is most common. Probably one of seven or eight of young married men has a wife who will one day die of phthisis, according to an estimate made by Dr. John Beddoe. Grant, then, that the male is tuberculous, and I apprehend we have a calculable frequency of this form of double phthisical death quite as high as any