are for persons with tuberculosis
must also be carefully considered. In some cases tuberculosis may be
cared for at home with comparative safety, and in some other cases the
risk is not very great if the patient is intelligent, careful, and well
supervised. But everyone should face the fact that all cases of
tuberculosis of the lungs involve some risk to others in the family, and
most cases involve great risk. The danger to children is greater than to
adults. Most tuberculosis infections, it is now believed, are acquired
in childhood. The bad results of an infection acquired in childhood may
not show themselves for years, since the germs may remain inactive until
the person's resistance is lowered by some unfavorable condition.

THE CHILDREN'S DISEASES.--The so-called children's diseases are probably
the most familiar and the least regarded of all those belonging to the
communicable group. Most persons, it is true, realize that scarlet fever
is serious; everyone should also realize that measles and whooping-cough
are serious. For example, in the State of New York during the year 1916,
more children died from each of these diseases than from scarlet fever:
in that year 745, or four times the number that died of scarlet fever,
lost their lives from whooping-cough, while 913 died of measles. If
diseases that kill hundreds of children every year are not serious, one
is at a loss to know what a serious disease is.

Some parents even expose children unnecessarily to these infections on
the fatalistic theory that they must have the diseases sometime, and
therefore the sooner the better. Nothing could be more mistaken; the
diseases are not inevitable, and there is no advantage whatever in
having them if escape is possible. Moreover, serious as the children's
diseases are in themselves, their after-effects may be even more
serious. At this very moment hundreds of people are going through
life handicapped by weakened hearts or kidneys, by defective sight or
hearing, merely because their parents considered the children's diseases
necessary. The common belief that children should have these diseases as
early as possible is also erroneous, since statistics show that the
younger the child the more likely is the disease to prove fatal.

Every mother should realize that the children's diseases are most
infectious in the early stages. Early symptoms include fever, sore
throat, and nasal discharge, and the trouble at first often resembl