The actual position of the tuberculosis problem to-day : being address delivered by request at the conference of the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis at Birmingham, July, 1923 / by Sir Robert Philip, M.D., LL.D., President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Professor of Tuberculosis in the University of Edinburgh.

  • Philip, Robert William, Sir, 1857-1939
Date:
[1924?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The actual position of the tuberculosis problem to-day : being address delivered by request at the conference of the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis at Birmingham, July, 1923 / by Sir Robert Philip, M.D., LL.D., President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Professor of Tuberculosis in the University of Edinburgh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    stages of tuberculosis. While affording ready help to such patients in more acute emergencies and educating tuberculous patients how to look after themselves, the Hospital finds its particular sphere in the continued segregation of patients at advanced stages of tuberculosis, who are discharging abundant tubercle bacilli. It contributes thereby to the limitation of sources of infection in households, where domestic conditions are likely to foster its spread. The first claim on hospitals for advanced cases seems obviously the admission of those occurring in contracted dwellings—particularly one- and two-roomed houses—when family circumstances involve close proximity of the patient to developing young life. Working Colony. As we have just seen, the essential purpose of the Sana¬ torium is to achieve an effective arrest of disease in cases capable of such arrest. The primary object of the Sanatorium is not, as stated by a recent writer “to fit the patient for the occupa¬ tion with which he was engaged before the onset of his illness.” In many cases, the character of that occupation and the unsatisfactory compulsory environment attaching thereto, has led to the illness. In other cases, the arrest that may be achieved can only be maintained, if an approach to sanatorium conditions can be carried forward into the patient’s after life. In a certain percentage of cases, effective arrest is only to be obtained by retention of the patient under immediate medical direction for a much longer period than is economically feasible at the Sanatorium. Regard to such considerations led me to propose the Working Colony as an institution supplementary to the Sana¬ torium—for a limited group of cases—for the more prolonged treatment of the disease, with a view to its ultimate arrest, and for the concurrent occupation or formal training of such persons in various remunerative branches of work, agricultural and industrial. In so far as it has been directed to its special purpose, the Working Colony has proved a conspicuous success, therapeutically and economically. Burrow Hill Colony,