Arizona republican., 1895-12-24

DacI6fIOlCSlSuS or Sanluafla1S, WAOS6
 only plea is for greater salary and power, with less work; but of c7ini- clans; students of the disease iby the bedside and in the human race, and therefore ought to bear some weight. But in addition to these opinions are
 the indisputable facts in the history of the disease.
 Who is attacked by tuberculosis?
 Those principally between the ages of | 20 to 30 years, over 50 per cent of whom have 8 history of tuberculosis in their families. Also the nervously de- | fective, insane, feeble-minded and those physically incomplete in very way. If it is a pure and simple con- tagious diseases, why these facts? Infection fails to be sustained by the evidence? Long before the tubercle
 bacillus was thought of, or infection
 dreamed of, or modern sanitarians had been born, consumption in all large cities was decreasing. If the poison of consumption fingers in the walls of the rooms, in the fabrics which adorn or the clothing which covers the individual why is it that the entire human race is not now affected with consumption?
 Moreover the theory of the con- tagiousness of tuberculosis is not modern idea. Hundreds of years ago the belief was that the disease was contagious, and acting on that belief the people of Naples from 17S2 to 1860 put in force most rigorous laws for the suppression of the disease. Every physician was fined S180 for the first failure to report a case of consumption under his care; and a second offense carried a penalty of ten years i'm prisonment In houses in which con- sumptives died the ceilings, floors. walls, doors and windows were torn out and burned; bedding and furniture shared the same fate, and such houses were tabooed for one year. Every consumptive with his or her family was summed and regarded as a public pest. The sick were driven into soli- Jude and permitted to die of neglect for intercourse with them was equiva- lent to punishment from society and business. What was the result of these extraordinary precautions? Did the death rate from the disease dimin- ish? Not in the slightest degree. Now if such measures as these were in- efficacious what can the modern con- tagionists do with their recrudesence of superstition and superstitious meas ures to prevent the disease? What can they accomplish with their idiotic regulations requiring consumptives to spit in portable spittoons and live in communities.
 Furthermore, the bacteriologists themselves tell US and prove it by their experiments, that the most po- tent germicides are sunlight, fresh air and dirt The specific bacilIi can live only in a medium specially sterilized for their halbitation; that in ordinary water, ordinary milk or in cess pools where putrefactive bacteria abound. they die.
 The germ theory of disease like many older and muTtiform theories of disease has been fad of the medical profession for several years now Like that individual of whom it was said: He drew on his imagination for his facts" the profession has remained invincible to the suasion of the over towering mass of evidence which ever accommodating, flies at hand ready to support the opponents and stagger the adherents of the "ibug craze"
 Tuberculous meat and milk are al leged to be causes of the disease If this be true why is it that ill Japan where scarcely any meat or milk are used by the native population tuber- culosis abounds; while in Corea, where meat is abundant, the disease is hard ly known? Why is it that if milk be the potent producer of the disease, that children, the most susceptible to all forms of disease, are not affected with tuberculosis?
 As the contagious theory of tuber- culosis is not true, what then becomes of the supporters of that idea? Are
 they to be permitted to erect them selves into a state paid power, aggress- ing more each year, and with their non-knowledge compel all to obey their nonsensicaI dictates which are not only ineffective, but cruel, and I was going to add inhuman, but make haste to refrain, for the rash measures
 advocated by them are characteristic ally human.
 ] If, as asserted by the Examiners s
 writer, the twentieth century will see diminished amount of tuberculosis. this result will not be due to the medi-
 cal profession of this day or that, for they neither have now or are likely to
 have then, any more effective arma-
 mentarium with which to combat the
 disease than had their prototypes and
 protagonists of old who prancing
 around with ''G" strings, tom-toms,
 rattles and masks made sedu,ous effort
 to frighten away the devil of disease. The assertion is made also, which,
 however, is foreign to the argument
 that most diseses (zymotic) attack the fllthiest parts of the cities. This is