Why? Sir Robert
Matheson, ex-registrar-general of Ireland, explained at a meeting of the
Woman's National Health Association. The more fit, he said, emigrate, and
the less fit stay home and propagate weak children. Besides, emigrants who
contract the disease elsewhere come home to die. Many so return from the
United States. Numbers of the 50,000 annual migrants from the west coast of
Ireland to the English harvests return to nurse the tuberculosis they
contracted across the channel. Dr. Birmingham, of the Westport Union, is
quoted as saying that in September a disease known locally as the "English
cold" is prevalent among the young men who have been harvesting in England.
Sometimes it is simple bronchitis. Mostly it is incipent phthisis. It is
easily traced to the wretched sleeping places called "Paddy houses" in
which Irish laborers are permitted to be housed in England. These "Paddy
houses" are often death traps--crowded, dark, unventilated barns in which
the men have to sleep on coarse bags on the floor.[3]
The Irish wage causes tuberculosis to mount higher. Dr. Andrew Trimble,
chief tuberculosis officer for Belfast, comments on the fact that the sex
affected proves that economic conditions are to blame. Under conditions of
poverty, women become ill more quickly than men. Dr. Trimble writes: "In
Belfast and in Ireland generally more females suffer from tuberculosis than
males.
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