Recognized HTML document

X.]   DISEASE.   181

rooms. The explanation of the fact that we have been discussing appears therefore to be summed up in the single word-Infection.


Consumptivity. Before abandoning the topic of hereditary consumption, it may be well to discuss it from the same point of view that was taken when discussing the artistic temperament. Consumption being so common in this country that fully one person out of every six or seven die of it, and all forms of hereditary disease being intermixed through marriage, it follows that the whole population must be more or less tainted. with consumption. That a condition which we may call "consumptivity," for want of a better word, may exist without showing any outward sign, is proved by the fact that as' sanitary conditions worsen by ever so little, more persons are affected by the disease. It seems a fair view to take, that when the amount of consumptivity reaches a certain level, the symptoms of consumption declare themselves ; that when it approaches but falls a little short of that level, there are threatening symptoms ; that when it falls far below the level, there is a fallacious appearance of perfect freedom from consumptivity. We may reasonably proceed on the hypothesis that consumptivity might somehow be measured, and that if its measurement was made in each of any large group of persons, the measures would be distributed normally."

So far we are on fairly safe ground, but now uncertainties begin upon which my data fail to throw