GENERAL HEALTH ACTIVITIES AND THEIR EFFECT ON TUBERCULOSIS MORTALITY

In preventive medicine, it is generally assumed that the discovery of the causal organism and the means of transmission of a communicable disease will be followed by a definite reduction in its prevalence and mortality, and that this reduction is greatly increased by an intensive campaign of popular education. This has been our experience with typhoid fever, yellow fever, malaria, diphtheria and other diseases, and it was the experience contemplated in dealing with tuberculosis. It has now been almost forty years since the identification of the tubercle bacillus, and almost thirty years since the first organization was created to combat the disease by means of popular education. For fifteen years that educational campaign has been intensified by the National Tuberculosis Association, which, with its affiliated societies, has become the largest and strongest extragovernmental health agency the nation has ever known. It is interesting at this time to consider what progress