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Beginning typically with a vigorous chill, sometimes so suddenly as to wake the patient out of a sound sleep, followed by a stabbing pain in the side, cough, high fever, rapid respiration, the sputum rusty or orange-colored from leakage of blood from the congested lung, within forty-eight hours the attacked area of the lung has become congested; in forty-eight more, almost solidified by the thick, sticky exudate poured out from the blood-vessels, which coagulates and clots in the air cells.

That this increase in virulence in the organism does occur was clearly demonstrated by a bacteriologist friend of mine, who succeeded in securing some of the sputum from a fatal case in the famous Tonopah epidemic of some years ago, an epidemic so fatal that it was locally known as the "Black Death."

The alimentary mucous membrane, especially that of the lower ileum and cæcum, is exposed to infection by swallowed sputum and by food materials, such as milk, containing tubercle bacilli.

The symptoms of ptisis are a continued fever, greater or less, detected in the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, thirst, a roughness of the tongue, slenderness of the neck, wasting of the entire body, constipation, wasting and shrinking of the finger-nails and fingers, hollowness of the eyes, pain in the left scapula extending to the shoulder, pharyngeal catarrh with abundant and mucilaginous sputum and a tendency to lachrymation.

When the sputum almost from the first is tinged with venous blood, or even when the sputum is very bloody, of the prune-juice variety, the heart is in serious trouble, and the right ventricle has generally become weak and possibly dilated. The heart may have been diseased and therefore is unable to overcome the pressure in the lungs during the congestion and consolidation.

The others old lost children, figures of scab and grime had been unaware of anything but inner cavities of craving and fear above the sidewalk firmament of trodden gum disks, sputum stars and the ends of twice-smoked cigarettes. He could not have lost sight of the Control Tower. He had never realized what streets were.

It is well known, too, that the sputum of a consumptive contains myriads of virulent tubercular germs. A fly feeding and crawling over such material must necessarily get some of it on its body, and as it dries and the insect flies about the germs will be distributed through the air, possibly over our food.

How can you prevent colds? 19. Does the tubercle bacillus attack other parts of the body? 21. Why should a consumptive hold a cloth before his face when coughing? 22. Why should his sputum be burned? 23. Why should he go to a camp or sanatorium? Give two reasons. 24. About how much money could this country afford to spend in fighting consumption? Why? 25.

It has been shown that the excretion from a fly that has fed on tubercular sputum contains tubercular bacilli that may remain virulent for at least fifteen days. Thus we see again the danger that may lurk in the too familiar "fly-specks."

I was still on duty at Versa, but the conversation in the R.A.M.C. Mess bored me, particularly at meals; it was all sputum and latrines, gas gangrene and the relative seniority of the doctors one to another. There was nothing to keep me at Versa, for my gunner fatigue party did not in truth need any supervision. So I determined to go to Udine. I started, walking, about 10 a.m. It was not too hot.