Consumptive Girls

The caroling mouths of Carol Volkman, 7, and her brother George, 3. printed on Christmas Seals brought the National Tuberculosis Association about $3.500,000 this year. The Christmas Seal sale last year totaled $4,532,005.18. The difference means the curtailment of many anti-tuberculosis activities. But one aim will not be scanted: attack on the problem of why twice as many young women as young men between the ages of 15 and 24 die from tuberculosis.

Since last week the experts know what the tuberculous girl is like, can pick her from the crowd. Edna E. Nicholson, investigator, described the typical tuberculous girl after looking at the coffins and talking to the relatives of the 678 girls who died of tuberculosis in New York City during 1929.

The typical t.b. girl, reported Miss Nicholson "is not the girl who gads about drinking, smoking, and concentrating on wild parties until the small hours of the morning. She is not a diet faddist, nor does she overstrain herself in athletics. Neither is she a down-trodden factory worker from the slums. She is apt to be the third in a family of five children, one of whom died fairly young. Her father is engaged in some form of manufacturing or mechanical industry and her mother does not work outside the home. The family's income is in the neighborhood of $50 a week, on which they live comfortably in a six-room house or apartment, and the girl spends her entire life at home. She starts to school at the usual age and leaves shortly before her sixteenth birthday. Within a few months she goes to work in an office which is about 30 minutes traveling distance from home. For almost two years she does clerical work about seven and a half hours a day. five and a half days a week. She wears the usual type of clothing, including lightweight hose and underwear, and a heavy coat which her parents are satisfied is adequate. Throughout her life she has a good appetite and does not diet. She is regarded as a fairly quiet 'home girl,' who does not keep irregular hours and averages between eight and nine hours sleep a night.

"She first menstruates when about 14 years of age; has never married nor had a history of pregnancy. She has not, to the knowledge of her family, ever been in close contact with an active case of tuberculosis. When out of school a little over three years and working almost two, the first recognized symptom of tuberculosis appears. She consults a physician within a month, and three or four weeks later the diagnosis of tuberculosis is made. She does not attend a clinic but spends almost six months in a tuberculosis sanatorium or hospital. In about a year after the first recognized symptom of tuberculosis, and when under medical supervision less than a year, she dies."

In England where tuberculosis among young women is also prevalent, two men, Drs. Ronald Walshaw & Gordon Smith, county tuberculosis officers for Worcestershire, blame cinemas and dance halls. Girls, they find, rush home from office, store or factory, snatch a hasty, insufficient meal, prance out to entertainment.

That may account for some U. S. cases, thinks Miss Nicholson. Nonetheless, she and other students are convinced "that the primary cause of increased tuberculosis mortality among young women lies in biological rather than environmental factors. For physiological reasons which are not abnormal nor pathological in any way, young women are, always have been, and very likely will continue to be more susceptible to fatal tuberculosis than are other groups of the population."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.