FIGHT MADE BY JEWS
AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS.
RABBI MAYER TELLS WHAT
RACE HAS ACCOMPLISHED.
Two Separate Institutions at Denver
for Sufferers of All Races and
Creeds -- First Patient
a Catholic.
Interest in the exhibit of the National Society for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, now going on in the Scarritt building, Ninth street and Grand avenue, under the auspices of the Jackson county society, increases. Yesterday and last night over 3,000 persons attended.
On account of the large attendance at the stereopticon lecture and the discussions by prominent local physicians in the evening, it has become necessary to double the capacity of the lecture hall.
Last night the meeting was under the auspices of the United Jewish Charities, with Rabbi H. H. Mayer in the chair. Rabbi Mayer told his audience what the Jewish people are doing in the fight against the great white plague. He spoke of its ravages among his people, especially in the sweat shops and the poor tenements of New York, where those from foreign lands live and work.
"The National hospital at Denver," he said, "is now managed and maintained wholly by the Jews, yet it is open to the unfortunate of all religions. Only two questions are asked of the applicant -- 'Is the disease in its first stages?' and 'Are you unable to pay for treatment?' It might be interesting to know that the first patient admitted was a Catholic. We have another institution in that city, a hospital for those in the advanced stages of the disease."
Rabbi Mayer then told his hearers that if they knew any person who needed treatment in these institutions to send them to Jacob Billikopf, local superintendent of the Jewish Charities, where they would be examined, classified and placed upon the waiting list for admission.
SYMPTOM OF CIVILIZATION.
"Consumption," he said in closing, "is only a symptom of modern civilization. It is a result of modern crowded and herded conditions in the great cities. That was its beginning, and it has spread like a pestilence."
Dr. Jacob Block, who followed Rabbi Mayer and spoke on "The Economic Value of Prevention," agreed that tuberculosis, or consumption,, is a disease of civilization. He then told of the advancement of bacteriology and what it had accomplished in the battle against this and other germ diseases.
W. L. Cosper, in his stereopticon talk last night, informed his audience that the tubercle bacillus, the germ of tuberculosis, is a vegetable germ. It is not a wiggling thing, but has no vitality, is inert and must be raised by dust or other method to get into the system, where it multiplies by dividing. In an hour one germ will become thousands, each doing its amount of damage to the person with the run down system or the unhealthy mucous membrane. A person in good health, he said, will get rid of all kinds of disease germs by his natural resisting powers.
USED THEM FOR SAUSAGE.
In speaking of tuberculosis in cattle and hogs, Mr. Cosper said that it had been found that about 1 per cent of cattle and 2 per cent of hogs were infected. At the great packing houses, through government inspection, such carcasses are destroyed, but in smaller communities where a butcher kills his own animals there is no inspection. A Nebraska butcher told Mr. Cosper that he had frequently found animals with diseased organs like those he saw at the exhibit. "But I never sold that meat," he said. "I always laid it aside and made sausage from it."
The germ of tuberculosis shown under the microscope is attracting much attention at the exhibit. Germs which cause green and yellow pus, diphtheria, typhoid fever, anthrax and tuberculosis are being cultivated in tubes on what is known as "culture media." Many of them have become so thick that they can be seen with the naked eye -- where there are millions of them. They are safely bottled.
