CHAPTER IX
cCoNTAGIOUS PHTHISIS

Those writers who have hitherto dealt with phthisis have
preferred, it seems, to discuss that form of the disease which
originally arises within the body, and has its origin in catarrh
which is carried to the lungs, or in the rupture of certain blood—
vessels, or in a deposit of matter,?3 either after pleurisy, or peri—
pneumonia?? and similar maladies. But they have recorded
nothing at all, or very little, about the kind of phthisis which
is contraeted by contagion. Though I do not ignore the kind
of phthisis that developes first in ourselves, I take it more for
granted, and shall now, according to my present plan, deal
mainly with the kind that is conveyed by contagion. (For it
is generally agreed that it can be contracted by contagion also).
And I shall show that it demands special attention. Now—
adays, we call it a 'decline' (wasting), a word which like the
term phthisis, used by the Greeks, is sometimes applied in a
more general sense to every possible kind of consumption of the
body; though it is sometimes used in the stricter sense of a
disease of the lungs per se.  This disease may arise in two ways:
sometimes from an ulcer which has formed in the lungs, from
which ulcer true matter discharges, or secondly, not from &
true ulcer, or from true matter, but rather from pituitous dis—
charges that have passed down to the lungs and turned into a
kind of matter.  In faect we may properly use the term phthisis
in eases also where the corrupted and putrefied pituita has so
affected the lungs, that, though they are not actually ulcerated,
they are nevertheless becoming flaccid and putrid. For, after
making dissections in certain eases, I have sometimes found
that &a part of the lungs was sound and in no way diseased, an—
other part not yet completely putrid, and not yet ulcerated,
but still flaccid and soft, and showing a tendency to decay; in
fact I have sometimes found the whole lung in this condition.
We may therefore correctly call 'phthisical' a man whose lungs

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