PARALLELISM IN THE TREATMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS AND CARDIAC DISEASE

The outstanding and gratifying phenomenon in the eradication of chronic disease—the decline in the tuberculosis death rate during the last two decades—invites serious attention to the malady that has supplanted tuberculosis as "captain of the men of death." Although tuberculosis still ranks among the major killing diseases and is exceeded only by heart disease and pneumonia, its past steady decrease is an almost certain augury of continued lessening of its menace and suggests that we be prepared, as tuberculosis becomes a less grave problem, to place in the campaign against the new "captain of death" as many as possible of the resources with which we have successfully fought the old.

The cut of more than half in tuberculosis mortality during the last twenty years brings into sharp contrast the situation with respect to mortality from heart disease, which has increased 31 per cent. in the United States during approximately the