Medicine: Cities & Tuberculosis

Chicago last week took a step toward preventing tuberculosis in that community when Mayor Edward Joseph Kelly ordered B. C. G. vaccine prepared in order to be administered to school children next autumn. Children born in Cook County Hospital will also get the vaccine which is composed of weak but live descendants of tubercle bacilli. When the bacilli are carefully prepared according to the precise method of Leon Charles Albert Calmette and Charles Guerin, B. C. G. vaccine apparently does prevent tuberculosis. But many a slip is possible and disaster may ensue, as Lubeck, Germany discovered four years ago when 57 infants died after vaccination with defective B. C. G. cultures (TIME, Aug. 4, 1930).

Chicago will not be the first U. S. city to try this system of immunization against tuberculosis. Louisville, Ky. has vaccinated 7,000 children. Both learned their technique from New York City, where for each of the past seven years Dr. William Hallock Park has treated 200 children. His results are promising, but the city is not ready to use B. C. G. vaccine on a large scale.

New York City is waiting for an absolute cure for tuberculosis before it expects to eradicate that disease. Last week Dr. Dwight Clifford Martin, retiring after 20 years with the Department of Health's tuberculosis bureau, said that although he believed in the eventual discovery of a cure, he saw none in prospect. But, he added, "control is a comparatively simple matter if the disease is caught soon enough. . . . Any person who contracts a particularly heavy cold or who has suffered from loss of weight may have tuberculosis. Any such condition should immediately be reported to a physician who can diagnose the condition by the use of x-rays."