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Show CANNOT "CATCH" DISEASE That Tuberculosis Is Not Contagious Has Been Proved Is Promoted by Insanitary Ccnditions. The word tuberculosis is derived from tuber, a Latin word, meaning a hump, a knob or bulbous growth. In the vegetable world the word tuber is applied to potatoes, which are bulbous bul-bous outgrowths from the roots, and to some other plant growths of similar sim-ilar formation. From tuber comes tubercle, little tuber or hump, and from that tuberculosis, the technical name of a disease which is characterized character-ized by the formation of tubercles in different parts of the body, as the lungs, bones, the interstines, the liver, etc. What is now known to scientists scien-tists as the tubercle bacillus was not discovered until about forty years sjo. and previous to that tuberculosis of the lungs was called consumption or phthisis; tuberculosis of tho bones was scrofula, and other forms had other names. Now tuberculosis embraces em-braces all forms of the disease, which is characterized by the formation of tubercles. Tuberculosis is not hereditary he-reditary in the sense of "running in families" or being transmitted from parents to children. It formerly was considered as largely due to heredity, hut at the Berlin congress on tuberculosis tubercu-losis in 1899, Virchow, a very high authority, au-thority, said: "I dispute this heredity absolutely," and he gave convincing reasons for his belief. Neither is the disease contagious in the sense of being be-ing "catching." It is due to the op-orations op-orations of the tubercle bacillus as developed and promoted by insanitary conditions. |