How To Prevent Consumption Spreading

The State Board of Health has just issued a leaflet on the restriction and prevention of consumption, in which it is stated that the deaths from consumption in Michigan are probably over 2,500 per year. It causes more deaths than any other disease. A few brief extracts from the leaflet are given here. The disease is communicable. "The mode of eommunication of the disease is mainly from the dried sputa from consumptives. The germs in the sputa are carried intothe airbysweepings, and deposited upon walls or contents of rooms, or find their way to the lungs of persons. No consumptive should expectórate on the floor. Cuspidors, in hotels and other public places and in rooms occupied by consumptives, should be partly fllled with water. They should be washed twice each day in boiling water, and the contents should be disinfected with a solution of bichloride of mercury. The cuspidor might well contain constantly a disinfectant, such as a üve per cent. solution of carbolic acid - one ounce of carbolic acid dissolved in a pint and a half of water. "The consumptive should carry small pieces of cloth (eaeh just large enough to properly reeeive one sputum) and paraffined paper envelopes or wiappers in which the cloth, as soon as once used, may be put and securely enclosed and, with its envelope, burned on the first opportunity. "The unwashed clothing of ar consumptive should not be minsjled with the unwashed clothing of another person; care should' be taken that the handkerchiefs be boiled, that other articles liable to harbor the bacillus shall be disinfected, and that no virus come in contact with a cut or injured hand. "No one should sleep in the same room with a consumptive patiënt; or in a room which has been occupied by a consumptive, unless the room has been previously subjected to the fumes of burning sulphur. A room which has been occupied by a consumptive person may well (with all its contents) be thoroughly disinfected, first subjecting it, for twenty-four hours, to strong fumes of burning sulphur, and then it should for several hours be exposed to currents of fresh air. After fumigation the walls may be rubbed with bread crumbs, which should then be burned."