I do not know the penalty to be visited upon a physician who offends the majesty of the law as set forth in section 1142 of the penal code, but I for one am willing to take the responsibility before the law and before my God for every time I have counselled, and every time I shall counsel in the future, the prevention of a tuberculous conception, with a view to preserving the life of the mother, increasing her chances of recovery, and, last, but not least, preventing the procreation of a tuberculous race. P. 5.
_THE SEXUAL LIFE OF WOMAN IN ITS PHYSIOLOGICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND HYGIENIC ASPECTS. E. Heinrich Kisch, M.D., Professor of the German Medical Faculty of the University of Prague; Physician to the Hospital and Spa of Marienbad; Member of the Board of Health, etc. Translated by M. Eden Paul, M.D. Rebman Co., New York._
As regards the marriage of any woman suffering from tuberculosis we must take into consideration a fact that medical experience has conclusively established, namely, that the processes of generation have an unfavorable influence upon pulmonary tuberculosis. P. 259.
During pregnancy tuberculosis advances with such rapid strides that pregnancy and lying-in accelerate the fatal event. In some cases of consumption it is the first pregnancy that is the most perilous, but in other cases a later pregnancy proves more perilous. P. 260.
_Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Department of Phthisio-therapy of the New York Post Graduate Medical School and Hospital; Senior Visiting Physician to Riverside Hospital-Sanatorium for the Consumptive Poor of the City of New York, etc._
Reprinted from the _Women’s Medical Journal_, September, 1915.
Of the 150,000 who it is estimated die annually from tuberculosis in the United States, I venture to say 50,000 have been bread winners. Estimating the value of such a single life to the community at only about $5,000, this makes a loss of $250,000,000 each year. Another third, I venture to say, represents children at school age. They have died without having been able to give any return to their parents or to the community. Making the average duration of their young life only 7.5 years, and estimating the cost to parents and the community at only $200 per annum, the community loses another $75,000,000. The value of lives of little babes, children below and above school age, adolescents not yet bread winners, and men and women no longer able to earn their living can not be estimated in exact figures, but is reasonable to suppose the total annual financial loss from tuberculosis in the United States to be at least half a billion dollars. This does not include the expenditures for hospitals, sanatoria, clinics, dispensaries, colonies, preventoria and other agencies, devoted to the solution of the tuberculosis problem.