The Commonwealth

YOUR CHANCES FOR CONSUMPTION.
They Depend Upon Your Age, Occupation, and Mode of Living.

Your chances for consumption are good. Indeed, they are entirely too good. Here are some interesting facts about your chances.

Last year over 13 per cent of all deaths in North Carolina, or one out of every seven, were caused by consumption. You run more chances of dying from consumption than from any other disease. Pneumonia comes second, followed by diarrheal and heart diseases.

Children and old people have the least to fear from consumption, but about one death out of every four occurring between the ages of twenty and forty is due to consumption.

Consumption exists and can be cured all the way from the equator to the pole. Your chances for consumption depend far more upon where you live. Those who work and live in foul, dusty, dirty places, such as cigar makers, tobacco workers, saloon keepers, or stone cutters, run five times as many chances of dying from consumption as farmers or lumbermen.

But don't lose hope. You can easily make your own chances against consumption infinitely better than those of the farmer or outdoor worker. Their chief advantage is in the fresh air they get when they are at work. But they don't work all the time, and so they don't get an abundance of fresh air all the time. Very few of them get enough fresh air in their bedrooms if they can keep it out. The same thing is true of their living rooms.

If you want to have as good chances against consumption as the farmer, get fresh air ten or twelve hours a day. If you want to have better chances, get it twenty-four hours a day.