ABSTRACT
Tuberculosis does not stand first on the list of causes of death in England, but it is the most serious, because it kills in infancy and prime of life. Although the death-rate from tuberculosis has been halved in the last twenty-seven years, yet it has not been reduced to the condition of a rarity like typhoid fever. A great number of attempts have been made of late to cure it by some method more direct than good feeding, fresh air, and sunlight or ultra-violet radiation. But the tubercle bacillus is a tough creature, and it is hard to kill it without killing its host first. Adult Europeans are generally already slightly infected with tubercle, and infection with the new bacillus is useless or dangerous. If science has not discovered a cure or an infallible preventive for tuberculosis, it has at least shown how the mortality could be greatly lowered.
