The Detroit tribune. (Detroit, Mich.) 1935-1966, 1936-12-19
Change "FOurth" to Fifth
BY Paul De Fruit and A. VI. Smith
Article V
FACTS THE STATISTICS


by Paul De Fruit and A. NJ. Smith
Article V
FACTS THE STATISTICS
The very best friends of the muir
derous TB microbe are the SNUG
people who ballyhoo the great tri-
umphs of Americas fight against
tuberculosis. The complacent self
congratulations on consumption's
so-called conquest are close allies
good cronies-of the invisible mil
lions of the waxy TB microbe le-
gion that kills nearly 10000
Americans each year, and about
1,000 year in Detroit alone.
The opponents of Detroit's great
new proposed ath-fight are those
amiable stick in the muds, COM
Portable fuddy duddies who beat
the drum in dissatisfaction be-
cause, in the past 80 years, Detroit
has halved its TB death rate.
Do they know that the White
Death, last year, slaughtered All
of Detroit's people in the prime Of
their productive lives and useful
ness, between the ages of Is and
40?
Do they realize that more Detroit
citizens in this peak period of life's
strength, died last year from tuber-
culosis than from any other cause?
Do they care about those 500 ad-
ditional citizens, younger and Older
who paid with their lives because
of the community's strange self
satisfaction at this first feeble be-
ginning of what might be a really
triumphant death-fght?
Let them remember that the
babies and little boys and girls
who died while maybe not yet use
full cogs in Detroit's glittering in
dustrial machine, are all OF them
somebody's sons or daughtrs. And
that the old ones,( past their
prime, are somebody's wife or hus-
band. father or mother.
Yet ii is here admitted that in
this efficient world we must not be
moved by such mawkish consid-
Grafton! Even so, there is this for
our let-well enough alone brothers
to remember:-They themselves
are not immune to the invisible
white death that may be breathed
or coughed or sprayed upon them
by those forlorn hundreds whose
lives may not be worth the saving.
1t is strange how the slow de-
cline of Americas tuberculosis
death rate has fooled millions into
feeling that the White Death is all
but conquered. This notion is not
confined to the aforementioned
mossbacks, but even our President
alert for Americas health, seems
to entertain it. Not so long ago,
thanking us for the way we'd dug
down into our pockets to help his
infantile paralysis foundation.
President Roosevelt said he hoped
that plague might soon be subdued
the way TB is in our power now.
And yet, last year, in II large
American cities, tuberculosis
showed itself on the increase. The
evil myrmidons of the waxy TB
microbe legion are murderously
alert. They're ready to take adj
vantage of the semi-starvation, the
cutting in the health staffs that
are the consequences of the need
less, adominable poverty due to
our depressions. The rate of TB
dying jumped 2s per cent, from
1884 to 1885, in one large city in
Ohio. Resourceful, the waxy legion
has a dear friend and ally in our
recurring poverty.
To appreciate how far this death
fight still is from real victory, it
would be we'll for our self-con-
gratulatory citizens To organize
themselves into sightseeing tours
in that waste-land of miserable
hutches and warrens that pass for
homes for a large number of De-
troit's citizens; to listen for the
screaming of a baby in the death
throes of tuberculous meningitis;
and for the moaning of child dy-
ing from tuberculosis that Ntill
kills more of Detroit's children of
Is years and under than any other
contagion.
This contempt for TBS danger
lot only holds back its conquest,
,ut may have the deadliest conse-