Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-04-26
4 Winning Fight

A MERICA is waging winning hght
~ against the plague of tuberculosis
plague that has scourged the world
as has no other disease, so vindictiye and SO
all-prevailing that, until a few years ago,
physicians and health authorities had all but
despaired of ever curbing it's ravages.
Proof, however, that the death rate from
tuberculosis is steadily on the decline comes
from a most competent source, the health
statistics Of wage-earners insured in the
Metropolitan Life Insurance company, one
of the big insurance concerns of the country
that is conducting its affairs on the practical
theory that the fewe rdeaths there are the
more profitable it is for the company.
The reductions in the death rate, moreover,
are greatest at the age-divisions of life where
the tuberculosis death rate has always been
highest where it causes the heaviest social
damage in creating broken homes and de-
pendent families, and where it removes wage
earners from the field of industry at time
when productive effort counts the most.
. Thus the pulmonary tuberculosis death
rate for insured white males between % and
forty years of age in the two years Of 1919
and 1920 combined, was one-half of that for
the combined years of 1911 and 1912. Such
progress in eight years is nothing short OF
remarkable. Before that, in thes age
DIVISIONS, TUBERCULOSIS LUX d LO1l VI 11Oih
to deaths per l 900 persons every year;
in 1919 and 1920 there were only from to
8 deaths per 1000 persons in this same age
division.
Even more encouraging are the mpany' S
statistics for persons betty 40 and 6O
years of age. In thi sage-division reductions
in the pulmonary tuberculosis death rate OF
white males varied from A per cent at the
period of 40 to "A years, to 27.5 per cent at
the group 60 to GA years. Beyond the age
of IS the decline in the rate was not less
than IL per cent. At the age group of from
20 to "a years, when the stresses of indus
trial life first begin to show their effects upon
the tuberculosis death rate, there was de-
cline of As per cent in the ,~th rate Among
adolescents of the ages of from Is to ~
years, the reduction was 27 per cent. Male
children under ten years of age also showed
substantial reduction.
The same story of gradual control of the
white plague is told in the reduced death
rate for white females. Likewise for colored
males and females. For these groups, also.
the greatest declines in the tuberculosis
.ath rate occurred in the main working
period of life. The age period from 80 to
81 years showed a reduction of At per cent
among white females. The only increase was
noted in the pulmonary tuberculosis death
rate of white females between the ages Of
Is and 10. This was an increase of three
per cent.
The death rate anon the negro children
has also steadily declined. There was a
greater decrease among negro children under
fifteen years of age than among white chill
dren, although even in the most recent years
the death rates for colored children have been
from six to ten times as high as among white
boys and girls. Beyond tn age of fifty, col
ored males show greater decline in the
death rate than do insured white males.
All of these statistics are so enco- raging
hot how % paTRfu1
OF the public and the hearty support of
everyone for work that is gaining such
ground in field where the ties and happi-
ness of all of Us are so vitality concerned.