Were our great Osler in my place, he would probably in his own inimitable way, treat the subject as if it were a clinical case. He would begin with the etiology, then describe the symptoms, then the prevention and the curative measures, and lastly, the prognosis, the outlook. I will endeavor to carry out this idea as well as I can in my present address, also beginning at the bottom of the social ladder with the children.
Tuberculosis in infancy is indirectly due, on the one hand, to either a hereditary or an acquired predisposition, and directly, on the other hand, to a postnatal infection. Direct hereditary transmission of the tuberculous germ from parent to child is of exceedingly rare occurrence. When the father or mother is tuberculous the child may inherit a predisposition, which I like to describe as a physiologic poverty, giving the child less resisting power to