Recent views on sanatorium treatment

Abstract

Physician to the Crooksbury Sanatorium. THE promise of " sanatorium benefit" under the recent Insurance Act has led to further discussions on the value and place of sanatorium treatment in a national anti-tuberculosis scheme. It has been rather the fashion lately in some quarters to represent sanatoria as being useless and expensive, and to assume that they can be replaced by some other agency, such as the municipal dispensary, and the arguments brought forward often show a singular disregard of well-known facts. Tuberculous infection is exceedingly widespread, but it does not necessarily cause illness unless there is constitutional deterioration from unsatisfactory habits or conditions of life, or some other factor. Although it is true that tuberculosis causes ill-health, it is equally true that ill-health causes tuberculous illness; and a rational scheme of treatment should comprise, not only the purely anti-tuberculous remedies, but many other measures which help to build up the general health. 1 A Complete Anti=Tuberculosis ~cheme.