Excerpt from The Glasgow Medical Journal, Vol. 93: January to June, 1920

The presently prevailing doctrine is that the child of tuberculous parents is not born tuberculous - nor with the seeds of the disease in his system - but that the specific germ, the tubercle bacillus, finds its entry into the child's body after birth. It is admitted that the child of consumptive parents may inherit a predisposition to tubercular disease, and that it is born with an enfeebled body which will afford a good soil for the implantation and growth of the bacillus.

If, however, such a child is kept in a healthy environment, and carefully nourished, and especially kept clear of all risk of infection from its tubercular parent, it is claimed that it may grow up a healthy individual free from consumptive taint. It is asserted that in the bulk of cases - or, at anyrate, a large number of cases - the child is infected by the diseased parent after birth. And it is at once evident that this danger is a very real one when we reflect on the close personal contact of mother and child - the kissing, the inhalation of the mother's breath, the atmosphere of contaminated air caused by the coughing of the mother, the danger of droplet infection. Of course the suckling of a child by a consumptive mother stands condemned, both on behalf of the mother's health as well as that of the infant. And even if removed from the mother's influence entirely the child still runs great risk of infection from the milk of tubercular cows, from the dust of infected rooms, from flies which have perchance been feeding on the expectoration of a consumptive. So there is a very strong case for the doctrine that tubercular disease in children is due to infection after birth. No reasonable person would attempt to deny that. This post natal infection doubtless accounts for a multitude of cases. But does it account for all C?

Is then not something to be said for the old View, namely, that the child may be born tuberculous - showing evidence of tuberculous lesions or concealing in its tissues the seeds of disease which will manifest itself later in life 7 This is a matter for careful consideration. Is congenital tuberculosis to be dismissed as a popular delusion, as a theory which has no foundation on fact? By no means.

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