Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/294

It is clear from the foregoing that the conditions favourable to the tubercle bacillus have on the whole been increasing in civilized countries for a very long time; in England for at least twenty centuries, and we know not for how much longer. It is calculated that, at the present day, at least one-seventh of the total number of deaths is due to its agency; but it is deathdealing to a vastly greater extent under circumstances which are even more favourable to it than such as normally obtain. For instance, in prisons and some barracks where the inmates are crowded together, and their vitality reduced from various causes, mental and physical, and where strong draughts of fresh air are usually absent, the death-rate from tuberculosis is enormous.

 

"Phthisis in Prisons.—Consumption prevails in prisons to a truly disastrous extent. I take the following statistical data from an excellent article on the subject by Bàer: In the United States prisons, from 1829 to 1845, the mortality from phthisis was 12'82 per 1000 prisoners at Philadelphia, and at Auburn and Boston 9 '8 9 and 10 - 78 respectively; in Baltimore prison it was 61 per cent, of the mortality from all causes. In the French prisons, particularly those in which long terms of penal servitude are worked out, the death-rate from phthisis amounts to between 80 and 50 per cent, of the mortality from all causes. In Dutch prisons it reaches the same height; in the Danish convict prisons it amounted in 1863–9 to 39 per cent, of all deaths; over the whole of the prisons of the Austrian Empire in 1877-80 it was 61·3 per cent.; and in the nine large convict prisons in Bavaria from 1868 to 1875 it was 38·2 per cent. In the penal establishments of Wurtemburg, according to Cless, the yearly average of deaths from phthisis from 1850 to 1859 was 24 per 1000; while from 1859 to 1876, in consequence of an improved diet, it fell, as we have seen, to 8 per 1000,