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Lawrence aii yt Ay,
Kansas he cayays 5 Sent

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APC GT eA iT Se

       

THE DOUGLAS COUNTY HEALTH UNIT, City Hall, Massachusetts Street, at
lith, functions daily from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Come in and tell
us your troubles.

TUBERCULOSIS

2

IT is an infection caused by Bacillus tuberculosis, more specifically
and accurately Myobacterium tuberculosis hominis. There are definitely
different families for cattle, birds, and fish. Occasionally bovine
tuberculosis attacks humankind, especially babies. This is part of' the
factual background for requiring so much meat and milk inspection and
supervision. Around twelve percent of all human deaths are believed
to be caused by tuberculosis. In the United States the rate is only
about two-thirds that much.

For a little more than a generation we have been trying to do some-
thing about tuberculosis. in Kansas. In 1909 the late Dr. S. C. Emley,
of the medical faculty of Kansas University took a two year leave and
spent it in traveling about the state with a special car (railway car)
lecturing, giving demonstrations, and distributing literature about
it. At about the same time the Sanatorium at Norton was founded.
Within the next ten years the Tuberculosis and Health Association be-
came active all over the state and for about twenty years has mains
tained a monthly tuberculosis diagnostic clinic in Lawrence. They
have spent about 25,000.dollars on this clinic and associated activi-
ties and have raised about 32,000 dollars for the work in Kansas and
.elsewhere,. Many cases have been diagnosed here and the contacts have
been investigated and followed up. Several cases have been traced to
their probable origins and doubtless many cases thus stopped before
they got started.

This disears has been progressively and more fearingly known for
several hundred years. Bunyan called it "Captain of the Men of Death",
The study of it was becoming more coordinated, less superficial and
more coldly scientific in the latter half of the last century when
Robert Koch, in 1882 discovered the specific bacillus and did his
monumental:work on it and his epoch making "postulates". Since then
things in this field have moved faster, with less error, and with ..:
more results. In 1900 the death rate from tuberculosis in the reg-
istration areas of the United Statcs was 201.9 per 100,000 and ii I950
it was 71.5. It is doubtless less now despite the presence of war
which always increases the number of cases and the deaths from tub-
erculosis,.

Why don't we all get it? Most of us do. Some careful studies made
in Germany on bodies of city dwellers, dead from other couses than