The Daily Progressive Miner

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT TUBERCULOSIS

USEFUL FACTS FOR THE TUBERCULOSIS AND THOSE LIVING WITH THEM.

The Progressive-Miner is in receipt of a pamphlet distributed by the Department of the Interior. Bureau of Education, prepared by the National Association for the study and prevention of tuberculosis an association organized to battle this prevalent trouble. To aid in this fight, the whole of the pamphlet will be published in The Progressive-Miner commencing with this issue followed in subsequent issues until the whole has been published.

PREFACE

There is today among the public a great amount of misinformation and misunderstanding about tuberculosis, a misinformation and misunderstanding which has many bad results, partly by causing suffering with this disease to live unwisely and to do things which are harmful to them, partly by causing the public to be unnecessarily afraid of infection and, therefore, making them look upon those who are afflicted with this disease with needless fear. What is needed, if tuberculosis is to be conquered in this country is a better knowledge by the public of what this disease is and what the patients themselves and their friends can do to combat it.

The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis realizes that the only way to remove such misinformation is by the dissemination of accurate knowledge on the subject. The following pages have been written with the aim of making plain to the layman what he can do if he, or one he loves, has developed this disease. This booklet contains the essential facts, and if its teachings are taken to heart and its directions are carefully followed, it should do much to bring about the early discovery and the successful treatment of this prevalent trouble.

In any book destined for popular instruction a certain amount of repetition is essential if certain important details are to be impressed upon the minds of the readers, and it is hoped that such repetitions as are found in this booklet will, for this reason, be pardoned.

Charles L. Minor, M. D. Chairman, Asheville, N. C.; David R. Lyman, M. D. Wallingford, Conn.; William H. Baldwin, Washington, D. C.; H. R. M. Landis, M. D. Philadelphia, Pa.; Jno. H. Lowman, M. D., Cleveland, Ohio. Committee on Educational Pamphlet of The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis.

greatly since the beginning of the war.

I Do You Value Your Health?

If so, what follows will interest you: read it carefully: it will pay you.

II Why Are People Afraid of Tuberculosis?

Because every third person between fifteen and sixty dies of it, or every fourth person between twenty and fifty: or, in other figures, it kills about one tenth of all people who die at any age. Also because it disables and renders useless and helpless those who have it, and is often the means of beggaring their families.

III. Why Should You Bother Yourself About It if You Are Not Sick With It?

Because you, or some of your family, may develop it at any time: therefore, by knowing something about it, you can greatly lessen the chance of getting it, or, should you get it, can lessen its danger to yourself and your children.

Further, every man and woman worth the name wants to help others who are in trouble. This pamphlet will teach you how to do that.

The Germ And Its Poison.

IV. What Is Tuberculosis?

Tuberculosis is a disease caused by the growth in your lungs, or, less commonly, in other parts of your body, of a minute microscopic fungus, plant, or germ called the tubercle bacillus. This germ produces and throws off poisons which kill the structures around it. Multiplying by division, it spreads, slowly or rapidly, through the whole lung until finally it kills the person in whom it grows.

In recent years it has been shown that the germ frequently gets into the body in childhood, but, since it does not grow easily in the human body, many of these germs are killed at once by the tissues. Others lie inactive for a long time in the glands in the chest and do not develop until by some chance the resisting power of the body is lowered sufficiently for the germ to begin to grow, the thoroughly healthy body not being a favorable growing place. Overwork, dissipation, dark dirty homes or workplaces, bad or scanty food, late hours, drunkenness, and certain sicknesses, such as grippe, measles, whooping cough, pneumonia and typhoid fever, and also frequent and closely repeated pregnancies, weaken the body give the germ the opportunity it needs, and enable it to develop. In bodies thus weakened, the germ can flourish, and, if they are not strengthened in time by proper living, the disease will advance. This advance is usually slow and gradual, so that the patient may live from two to ten years, but in the more rare galloping form its advance is rapid, so that the patient dies in from six weeks to a year.

What Is Resistance?

Fortunately for us the germ of tuberculosis does not grow easily in the human body.

All animals have a certain degree of resistance to the attack of the germ. In some this resisting power is very low: in some very high. The guinea pig, for example, has almost no resistance to this disease, while the goat has so high a resisting power that it is very hard to infect it at all. Among human beings the Indian and probably the negro show a very low resisting power, and when infected, are apt to have the rapid and dangerous form of the trouble. The average white man on the contrary has considerable resisting power, and it takes repeated, prolonged exposure and unfavorable conditions of working and living, to infect him, except in early childhood, when, it should never be forgotten, infection is very easy.

The Germ Conquering-Caseation.

The first manifestation of the activity of the germ in the body is the formation, usually in the lungs, of a small gray lump, which we call a tubercle. This is about the size of the head of a pin, and, examined under a microscope, it is seen to consist of a cheesy mass of dead tissue with germs lying in it. The formation of this dead tissue by the poisons of the germ is called "Caseation." Surrounding the cheesy center is a double layer of cells thrown out by the body to protect itself from the invading germ. If the poisons of the germ are sufficiently strong, or if the cells surrounding the germ are sufficiently weak, they too will be destroyed, and by degrees successive layers of tissue will be killed, the trouble thus spreading at the outer border through larger and larger areas of tissue until finally the whole lung is involved. When the mass of dead tissue reaches an air tube it is coughed up and leaves a small cavity behind. When this cavity becomes bigger, other sorts of germs from the outside air may get into it and help the tubercle germ to spread destruction, thus finally producing what we call "Consumption."

The Germ Defeated-Fibrosis.

If, however, the body is put under favorable conditions of feeding, of fresh air and of wise living, its cells will be so strengthened that when the poison of the germ attacks them, it will not be able to kill, but only to irritate them. This irritation causes them to change from simple round cells to long cells, which gradually turn into scar tissue. Under favorable conditions this wall of scar tissue slowly gets thicker and thicker, and while this barrier of scar is being built around the trouble, Nature is busy depositing chalk in its center. If this process goes forward successfully, in the course of two or three years there is built up around the disease a strong wall of scar tissue. This process of scar tissue formation shutting in the trouble is what we call "Fibrosis," and it is by such Fibrosis that the body manages to overcome the germ and to free itself from active evidences of disease. Hence the disease is really a struggle between "Caseation" and "Fibrosis," and it is only by doing everything we can to favor a satisfactory Fibrosis that we can conquer the trouble. From this it is evident that our efforts at treatment must be chiefly directed to strengthening the patient's body, for whatever strengthens this, strengthens the cells which compose it and enables them to build up a strong wall around the disease. The disease can be compared to a battle between the germs which have gotten into the body and the cells which make it up. If these cells are well nourished and cared for they will win, and will shut in and finally kill the germ; if not, the germs will by degrees kill them and cause the patient's death.

Possibility of Cure.

Once the disease has attacked the body, it always leaves scars behind, as a careful examination of dead bodies will show. Since, however, with careful living, these scars will remain firm and strong, enclosing the trouble, in which by degrees the germ may die out, patients may justifiably be considered "cured": but it must never be forgotten that as a result of dissipation, overwork or sickness the disease may break out again. The examination of the lungs of those who have been healthy, and have died of some other cause, will show that a very much larger number of people have had active trouble at some time in their lives than ever die of it, the scars of old healed disease being found in such cases.

Tuberculosis is not like typhoid fever or smallpox, or measles or scarlet fever, which diseases are easily and quickly taken if you come in contact with those who have them, and which develop in from one to two weeks. It is caught much less easily, takes a long time to develop after it is caught, and can be prevented from developing, very often, by wise life, or can be cured or arrested in a large number of cases if it has not gone too far. Therefore, it is not necessary to despair and give up hope if you, or some one you love, have caught this disease, but it does demand an immediate improvement of your ways of life, and of your surroundings, so as to strengthen your body to the utmost in order that it may be able to shut in, wall up and conquer the trouble. The cure is not as complete as it is in pneumonia, for instance, where after the disease is cured there is no trace of it left in the body. In tuberculosis scars are always left and germs for a long time can be found in these scars, and unwise living can enable them to break out again, but, as ample experience has shown, it can be so successfully walled in that all symptoms of its presence may be lost, and the patient can resume a normal and useful life if only he is willing to live wisely and prudently. However, a relapse is always possible after an arrest, even after many years.

(To be continued tomorrow.)