The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-10-18
WHAT HAS WAR
 TAUGHT US OF
 TUBERCULOSIS?
Dr. Stephen J. Maher Says Army Doctors Failed To
 Make Important Finds.
MANY QUESTIONS ON DISEASE UNANSWERED
Large Medical Military Or ganization Not Capable of
 Advancing Knowledge.
(By pr. Stephen J. Maher. Chairman of the Connecticut State Tuber-
 culos1s Commission.)

(By pr. Stephen J. Maher. Chairman
 of the Connecticut State Tuber-
 culos1s Commission.)
 Recently, I had an interesting con- versation with an old acquaintance of yours and mine, the tubercIe bacillus l had just finished reading a very comforting address by one of our breezy Western health officers on the approaching doom of the tubercle bacillus. According to this address, all that was necessary now to ac- complish the destruction of the arch enemy of the human race, was to quicken the social conscience and and then to hand over this quickened social conscience to the various boards of health. The war, declared this address, had dem monstrated that if tuberculosis were attacked in army fashion, there would soon be no tuberculosis.
 soothed and pleased at the pros pect, I dropped the book for mo- ment and gazed rather vacantIy toward the dwindEng fire in the grate. I soon became conscious of a faint odor of vioIets in the room. I looked toward the door. There in front of me stood an enormous tuber- cIe bacillus, curved and waXed, and glowing in a IethaI haze of it's own eXuding. Like peas in a slender pod, four coccaI granules shone dimly through it's capsule. One 6f these c0ccaI granules at the end of the bacillus nearest to me, was larger than the others, and seemed about to break out or bud, from the rest of the rod. Whether it was from this end that the voice came, I couldn't make out, but it did, eery and gloat- and defiant. And this is what it sad:
 ''So, Ho! The war has wrought my doom, eh! How down-heartcd I should be! Strange thing that while the war lasted I had more victims than ever before, more in the coun- tries that fought, and more in the neutral countries. And since the war ceased, is there any country in the world where my deaths are fewer than before the war? But now I must prepare for my own death! I am to be no more! I am to be de- stroyed by army methods. Army methods! If the methods were good methods, undoubtedly the army med ical corps, because it is a well oiled machine, would get me, but the meth ods used by the American army, and, in fact, by every army engaged in the last war, to encompass my de- struction, were ludicrous beyond de- scription. The civil physicians who examined the drafted men made some mistakes. but the army physicians who re-eXamined at the camps made more mistakes. The army method of physical examination was devised for the benefit of the Predetermined of the army doctors to save them from thinking, but, of course, it applied to the able-minded of the army doctors as well. These it prevented from thinking. The resulting diagnoses were both tragic and comic.
 Army methods? Destroy me bv army methods? The army methods of discovering me and my hiding places, were worse than the pre-war civil methds. The X-ray? Yes. That helped the army somewhat, but the army merely used the imperfect pre- war Knowledge, and the army use of this knowledge was frequently faulty because the ColoneTs interpretation of plate was always right, and the Captains interpretation was right only when it agreed with the Col onePs. The army X-ray machines added nothing to your knowledge of me, nor for that matter, to your knowledge of the X-ray.
 And, as to the army,s method of treating my army victims, it was merely a stumbling and halting imi- tation of the civil methods of pre- war absolutely nothing new.
 And as to the army's method keeping me from making new yic- tIms in the army-it had no such method True, I didn't make many new victims in the army, but nobody in or out of the army knows why"
 Few New Cases In the Army.
 See here, you fiend," I cried, Fin that last statement you admit that the arny's methds were effective. You say few new cases occurred in the army. That was the object of all the army's methods-to prevent new cases in the army. And the same methods in civil life will prevent new
 'da, ha, replied the voice. '"The same methods have been long applied in civil life, and my power is still su prefne the wide world over. And as to the effect on me of quickenine tho social conscience and handing it over to the various boards of health. there wasn't a regiment in Europe thar didn't break all the board of health rules ever invented. The soldiers lived in insanitary quarters. They smoked necessarily. They drank beer and wine and unprotected water, They suffered hardships of all kinds phvsi- cal and mental. They spat on the walks and everywhere else. They slept in the mud. They were covered with cooties. They swapped pipes and clothes and know not individual drinking cups. At the sight of these conditions, the members of the or dinary board of health, holding in their hands this precious qufckened civic conscience that your friend talks of, would all have dropped dead of apoplexy.
 Yet, under these conditions few new cases of tuberculosis developed in the armies. The enormous in- crease in the number of new cases oc- cured among the comparatively com fortable clean well-housed people at home. Don't you think that the army's hardships and lack of observ- ance of board of health laws had something to Go with saving the sol , diers from tuberculosis ?''