The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1906-12-04
THE ITALIAN IMMIGRANT.
Sand Picture of His Condition in the
Crowded CITY

Crowded City,
Painfully pathetic, writes an italian
contributor, is the picture, just pre-
scented to the world by DR.. Antonio
Stella, of the deterioration of his coun-
trymen in the great cities of the
American Union, to which for years
past they have been iocking in quest
of remunerative work. says writer in
the London Lancet. At the recent Con-
gress for the Prevention of Tuberculo-
sis at Milan, DR.. Stella was one of the
most authoritative and cogent inter-
lOcutors, and once more, ere returning
to New York to resume his post as vice
president of the Society for the Pre-
lection Of italian Immigrants, he has
made his voice heard in behalf of the
sons and daughters of Italy whose fate
in the Empire city and other western
hives of population is at length APP
pealing to the home government as
more than ripe fol. strenuous and sys-.
tematic Intervention.
The Italian youth of both sexes who
before their twenty-tirst year in the
case of females and their twenty-fifth
year in that of males leave leave the
rural districts of the motherland for
the United States and pass at once in
to industrial or factory life at that
critical period of their development are
doomed to rapid deterioration, and in
the case of quite one-third of them to
premature death. To say nothing of
anemia in every form, tuberculosis, in
DR.. Stella's experience, reaps its great
est harvest of victims among those
who migrate during, or little after,
the period of adolescence. Out of 500
cases of tuberculosis collected from the
hospitals and infirmaries of New York,
in addition to others occurring in his
private practice DR.. Stella found that
531 had landed from Italy at ages be-
ween IA and 21-landed, be noted, in
good health.
The mean period Of sojourn in the
city up to the first symptoms of ma
laise was from three to six years-the
minimum period declaring itself among
girls employed in tobacco manufac-
tories, or as employed in tobacco
manufactures, or as itinerant seam
stresses, or as regularly engaged dress
makers, For these latter three or four
years Of life in the establishments or
tenement houses" Of New York suf-
fees to make them fertile meria for the
propagation of the Koch bacillus. The
first symptoms in well-nigh every case
We're those of anemia and general de-
cline of weight, progressive languor,
and so forth, long before the patho-
genie signs, cough and hemoptysis,
emerged in characteristic form.
This, says DR.. Stella is highly signi-
ficant, as showing how the oligemla at
that age represented in nearly every
case the pretubereulous condition; all
the more significant that scarcely any
of them showed a transmitted phtisical
faint The deadly surroundings in
which they lived and labored the in
sanitary and overcrowded "accommo-
dation,' the long hours spent in the
factories, the thousand and one priva-
tons imposed by poverty and the zeal
for wage adequate nutrition proportion
ed to the drain on the vital powers at
a period of growth which is Biological
ly the most important in life-all this.
adds DR.. Stella, explains irresfragably
the rich harvest reaped by tuberculo-
sis among SO many young Italians. The
bacillary INVASION in fact, is natural
coincidence in their already deterior-
ated organisms coincidence reveal
ed in the circumstances that the per-
iod of greatest activity and diffusion
of tuberculosis Q5-45 years. eorres-
ponds exactly with the age Of the
great majority Of immigrants from
Italy
Again, in the case Of Italian chill
dren born in America or who have
landed in infancy the predominant
signs of degeneration are seen In
tuberculosis ossea, or in tuberele in
the glands and peritoneum; while from
10 years Of age to 30 it is the pronounc-
ed obligemia leading UP to pulmonary
tuberculosis, often of the military type,
which claims the largest quota of VIC |
TINS. On the other hand, after the per-
od Of maturity and precisely among |
over 80, tuberculosis is less
frequent, the signs Of organic deteriora
ion being those of the cardiac group,
,lassed unde "exhaustion" Landing
with an abundant stock of health and
igor due to an agricultural life rein
orcing a robust constitution, the i'm
Migrant who has passed his thirtieth
ear, even when applying himself to
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