Tuberculosis of the lungs is the most dangerous of all forms, both because the lungs appear to have less power of resistance against the tubercle bacillus, and also because from the lung, the bacilli can readily be coughed up and blown into the air again, or spit onto the floor, to be breathed into the lungs of other people, and thus give them the disease.
Two-thirds of all who die of tuberculosis die of the pulmonary, or lung, form of the disease, popularly called consumption.
The first thing then to be done to put a stop to this frightful waste of human life every year is to _stop the circulation of the bacillus from one person to another_.

This can be done partially and gradually by seeing that every consumptive holds a handkerchief, or cloth, before his mouth whenever he coughs; that he uses a paper napkin, pasteboard box, flask, or other receptacle whenever he spits; and that these things in which the sputum is caught are promptly burned, boiled, or otherwise sterilized by heat.

The only sure and certain way, however, of stopping its spread is by placing the consumptive where he is in no danger of infecting any one else.

And as it fortunately so happens that such a place--that is to say, a properly regulated sanatorium, or camp--is the place which will give him his best chance of recovery, at least five times as good as if he were left in his own home, this is the plan which is almost certain to be adopted in the future.

Its only real drawback is the expense.
But when you remember that consumption destroys a hundred and fifty thousand lives every year in this country alone, and that it is estimated that every human life is worth at least three thousand dollars to the community, you will see at once that consumption costs us in deaths alone, four hundred and fifty million dollars a year! And when you further remember that each person who dies has usually been sick from two to three years, and that two-thirds of such persons are workers, or heads of families, and that tens of thousands of other persons who do not die of it, have been disabled for months and damaged or crippled for life by it, you can readily see what an enormous sum we could well afford to pay in order to stamp it out entirely.
One of the most important safeguards against the disease is the law that prevents spitting in public places.