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1904.] OF THE SENATE. 51
the human race, and the very substantial and tangible
material benefit to arise by checking the ravages of the
disease and preserving the health of the people, so
that their energies shall not be sapped by suffering or
diverted from bread-winning pursuits and monopolized
in ministering to the sick, which influenced me two
years ago to ask the General Assembly of 1902 to
create the said Tuberculosis Commission to investi-
gate the prevalence of the disease, its cause, and to
devise means to restrain it, impels me now with equal
earnestness to urge your Honorable Body to action.
In the face of scientific research it can not be suc-
cessfully denied that it is not only possible, but en-
tirely practicable, to confine the spread of the disease
from one person to another, and in some cases also to
arrest its development in the individual upon whom it
has seized.
No public facilities exist in Maryland for the treat-
ment of tuberculosis, and we consequently lose every
year many thousand dollars and many hundred lives.
The most powerful and the most pathetic illustra-
tion of the extent of the disease is the indifference of
the public, born of long familiarity with its presence,
to its frightful ravages If 10,000 people in Maryland
were inconvenienced to-day with a harmless epidemic
we would be amazed and filled with consternation, but
the presence of the same number of tuberculosis cases,
most of them hopeless, occasions little comment. As
a whole people we take the untimely death from one
disease of 2,500 of our citizens in a single year, with
hopeless, helpless fatalism.
If we could rid the subject of all the finer humani-
tarian considerations and consider it carefully from the
baldest, coldest pecuniaiy standpoint we would be
forced to the conclusion that ir is a paying business in-
vestment to grapple with this problem and solve it
The loss in the productive capacity of the State by
reason of the great number of people incapacitated by
tuberculosis and those whose time must be given to
nursing the sick must be enormously greater than the
cost of caring for the sick in scientifically arranged
institutions, and adopting simple precautionary mea-
sures.
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