McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908.Various
History
McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
This unreliability may be set down to the account of the medical
profession. Realizing though they do the danger of concealment from the
proper authorities, and in the face of the law which, as it gives them
special privileges, requires of them a certain return, a considerable
percentage of physicians falsify the returns to protect the
sensibilities of their patrons. That they owe protection rather to the
lives of the public, they never stop to think. Tuberculosis is the
disease most misreported. In many communities it is regarded as a
disgrace to die of consumption. So it is. But the stigma rests upon the
community which permits the ravage of this preventable disease; not upon
the victims of it, except as they contribute to the general lethargy. In
order to save the feelings of the family, a death from consumption is
reported as bronchitis or pneumonia. The man is buried quietly. The
premises are not disinfected, as they should be, and perhaps some
unknowing victim moves into that germ-reeking atmosphere, as into a
pitfall. Let me give an instance. A clergyman in a New York city told me
of a death from consumption in his parish. The family had moved away,
and the following week a young married couple with a six-months-old baby
moved in.
"What can I do about it?" asked the clergyman. "Mr. Blank's death was
said to be from pneumonia; but that was only the final cause. He had
been consumptive for a year."
"Warn the new tenants," I suggested, "and have them ask the Health Board
to disinfect."
More than a year later I met the clergyman on a train and recalled the
case to him. "Yes," he said, "those people thought it was too much
trouble to disinfect, particularly since the reports did not give
tuberculosis as the cause of death. Now their child is dying of
tuberculosis of the intestines."
In this case, had the death been properly reported by the dead man's
physician, as the law required, the City Board would have compelled
disinfection of the house before the new tenants were allowed to move
in. The physician who obligingly falsified that report is morally guilty
of homicide through criminal negligence.
In Salt Lake City, in 1907, 43 deaths were ascribed to
tuberculosis--undoubtedly a broad understatement. And in the face of the
ordinance requiring registration of all cases of consumption, only five
persons were reported as ill of the disease. By all the recognized rules
of proportion, 43 deaths in a year meant at least 500 cases, which,
unreported, and hence in many instances unattended by any measures for
prevention of the spread of infection, constituted so many separate
radiating centers of peril to the whole community.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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