[Report 1914] / Medical Officer of Health, West Bromwich County Borough.

  • West Bromwich (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1914] / Medical Officer of Health, West Bromwich County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/48 (page 21)
    sufferers from the disease, and the opposition raised in many places to the establishment of institutions for its detection and treatment, a reassuring statement with regard to the degree of danger attaching to contact and communication with tuberculous persons be prepared by the College and issued in its name at an early date.’7 A Committee was appointed, consisting of Sir Seymour Sharkey, Drs. Habershon, Sandwitli, Fremantle, and C. J. Martin, and the Report of this Committee, which was approved by the College, is given below. It is inserted here as likely to be useful to Medical Officers of Health. It embodies the chief facts on the strength of which the machinery for the administra¬ tive control of Tuberculosis, now forming a large part of the work of the medical department of the Board and of Medical Officers of Health, has been initiated. REPORT ON THE INFECTIYITY OF TUBERCULOSIS. 1. Tuberculosis is an acquired disease, but certain consti¬ tutional types may be inherited which render the patient specially susceptible to infection, and there is reason to think that such susceptibility is an inherited character. 2. The infective agent is the tubercle bacillus. This may be contained in the various discharges and excreta of the patient, and especially in the sputum of those suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis. No discharge is infective unless it contains the tubercle bacillus. 3. Cases of tuberculosis of bones, glands, and internal organs from which there is no discharge or which do not furnish any excretion, and cases of arrested pulmonary tuber¬ culosis, have never been proved to be infectious. (By arrest is here meant that all the symptoms and physical signs of activity have disappeared, and the sputum has either ceased or no longer contains tubercle bacilli.) 4. The means by which tubercle bacilli may enter the body are: — (a) By inoculation through a wound or abrasion of the skin. This has occasionally occurred to workers in laboratories, post-mortem attendants, and others dealing with tuber¬ culous material, and is presumably the way in which lupus is acquired.