Abstract
IN a paper (Amer. J. Psychiat., 96, 1335; 1940) based on his experience of pulmonary tuberculosis in mental hospitals during the last nine years, Dr. C. A. Wicks states that though the tuberculosis mortality rate for patients in the Ontario mental hospitals has shown a tendency to decrease since 1934, in 1936 the rate was fourteen times greater than that for the province as a whole. Approximately 2-5 per cent of 2,908 patients admitted to the Ontario mental hospitals during 1938 required isolation on account of X-ray findings in the chest. From the tuberculosis situation as it existed in January 1939 it was estimated that a central tuberculosis mental hospital would be required to accommodate approximately 5–2 per cent of the patients in Ontario mental hospitals. X-ray examination of the chest in 2,542 staff in the Ontario mental hospitals in 1937–38 showed that 0·6 per cent required treatment for tuberculosis. Since 1933, about 0·5 per cent of the employees have needed such treatment every year. About 1·7 per cent of 839 apparently healthy applicants or new staff in the Ontario mental hospital service during the calendar year 1938 showed X-ray evidence of pulmonary tuberculosis which was active or possibly active, thereby rendering them unacceptable for employment.
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Tuberculosis in Mental Hospitals. Nature 146, 456 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146456b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146456b0