Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1911-05-06
Try Prevention and Not "Cure."


revised. 1t should be said that
pennyweight of prevention is worth
ton of cure. While no cure was
ever discovered for yellow fever, yet
4 the malady has been wiped out of ex-
istence by simple processes of pre-
vention. The same problems touch
ing tuberculosis are now being worked
/. out day by day, and the simpler proc
esses of prevention are proving a
Z thousand times more effective than all
the cures that have been discovered in
I the ages of the great white plague.
The necessity for eternal vigilance
/ in practising the art of prevention
leads to constant misconceptions of
4 the great scheme of things. Even up
to the present moment the authorities
8 disagree. Recently, DIR. c. F. Walsh
in an article in the Technical World
! Magazine declares that. notwithstand
ing the optimist consumption is on
. the increase. He singles out and lays
great stress on the fact that con-
4 sumption is contagious disease, and
on the contention that it is not con-
tracted TO any great extent through
infected milk or even by using drink
j ing cups that consumptives use or
Z through the splitting nuisance" he
declares that its spread is through the
infection of the habitation. Here is
one of his abridged parallels:
The disease is discovered in time. =. i.
Brown packs off at once to Arizona
where he pitches his tent in the desert
as more or less permanent abode, The
conditions seem to be ideal. The air is
dry and warm, the skies always blue
ii is during the heat of the midday /.
sand at night For time he improves
and he makes no change in the location
q turn rI for for the worse and de in less
than year is dead. Jones is an
other victim. He goes to Arizona. He
has an Idsa hs Gan get along h,. without
1above, rolled up in his blanket. +He
Z naturally moves from place to place
= each day sleeping on. new and different
/ clireds Smith has the disease and
goes to the west. He feels and looks in
eperfect health long before year is gone.
~
y cured. In less than four months he is
again in the tenacious clutches of the
disease.
4 Brown infected the ground, and at
last that infection became so strong
as TO reinfectIhim and drag him down.
FJones. continually moving. threw off
the disease ana got away from it.
Smith went Back to his infected room
with the same result as with Brown in
remaining WITH his germs. Dr. Walsh
makes it plain that it was not neces-
sary for these men to go to Arizona or
away from home; that it was not ne
cessary for Jones to sleep without
shelter; that light tent which he
could move every day would have been
as efficacious, and also that Smith
could have been saved If he had thor
oughly disinfected his old quarters
when he returned.
But the thing in which we are most
interested, and which DIR. Walsh brings
out, is the indisputable fact that con-
sumption must be prevented rather
than cured; that prevention is easy
and cheap, and lies in disinfection.
This in the case of the consumptives
quarters. he insists, should be at least
once week. The formula is simple:
'Fumigate every room in the house
with vapor given off by heating
formaldehyde. Wash all the floors,
windows and woodwork with mild
solutions of corrosive sublimate in
water"
Thus we deduce that fresh air either
at home or in Arizona is insufficient,
but that fresh air in Maine, taken in
connection with proper precautions,
will prove just as effective as the fresh
air of Arizona or Colorado or of any
point on earth the most remote from
your home.
But DR.. Walsh reaches the conclusion
that the very existence of the hope of
a cure" has been responsible for the
increase of the disease. He urges peo-
the germ that turks in the house or the
ground, and concludes with the
declaration that until we begin to for
sake the hope of cure for the work of
prevention the demand for state APP
preparations for institutions will in
crease and that deaths will increase
also.
Accepting DR.. Walsh as correct in
his common sense deductions, we must
arrive at the startling conclusion that
most consumption cure buildings are
erected on the wrong principle and on
the wrong presumption. We must
reach the inference that it is a home
aud not a state affair.
-S-SSN-s-
Disposes of War Scare.
IT may carry some comfort to the