Here was a disease of civilization, caused by the conditions of that civilization. Could it be cured without destroying its cause and reverting to barbarism? Yet this very apprehension was a sign of hope, a promise of improvement. That we were able to feel it was a sign that we were shaking off the old fatalistic attitude toward disease,--as inevitable or an act of Providence. It was brought about by the more accurate and systematic study of disease. We had long been sadly familiar with the fact that death by consumption, by "slow decline," by "wasting" or "slow fever," was frightfully common. "To fall into a decline" and die was one of the standard commonplaces of romantic literature. But that was quite different from knowing in cold, hard figures and inescapable percentages exactly how many of the race were killed by it. It is one of the striking illustrations of the advantages of good bookkeeping. Boards and departments of health had just fairly got on their feet and started an accurate system of state accounts in matters of deaths and births. We were beginning to recognize national health as an asset, and to scrutinize its fluctuations with keen interest accordingly. We may decry statistics as much as we like, but when we see the effects of a disease set down in cold columns of black and white we have no longer any idea of submitting to it as inevitable. We are going to get right up and do some fighting. "One-seventh of all the deaths" has literally become the war cry of our new Holy War against tuberculosis. Still another stirring phrase of inestimable value in rousing us from our torpor was that coined by the brilliant and lovable physician-philosopher, Oliver Wendell Holmes: "The Great White Plague of the North." This vivid epithet, abused as it may have been in later years, was of enormous service in fixing the public mind on consumption as a definite, individual disease, something to be fought and guarded against. Before that, we had been inclined to look upon it as just a natural failing of the vital forces, a thing that came from within, and was in no sense caused from without. The fair young girl, or the delicate boy whose vitality was hardly sufficient to carry him through the stern battle of life, under some slight shock, or even mental disappointment, would sink into a decline, gradually waste away, and die. What could be done in such a case, except to bow in submission to the inscrutable ways of Providence? It seems incredible now, but such was the light in which smallpox was regarded by physicians of the Arabian and mediaeval schools: a natural oozing forth of "peccant humors" in the blood of the young, a disagreeable, but perfectly natural, and even necessary, process. For if the patient did not get rid of these humors either he would die or his growth would be seriously impaired. Now smallpox has become little more than a memory in civilization, and consumption is due to follow its example.