Tuberculosis in Japan which had once been dreaded under the name of “the people's disease” has come to assume quite a different aspect, because of the sharp drop in its mortality rate, after the ten-odds years of strenuous efforts against it.
Meeting a demand from parties concerned for the elucidation of the present situation of this disease, the Welfare Ministry undertook a national survey over a period of three consecutive years, i. e. 1953-55. The national survey contributed a great deal for the understanding of the existing status of this disease in our country, but in our opinion there remain not a few questions yet to be solved. Different behaviors of tuberculosis in rural and urban districts would be one of them.
The author, therefore, trying to find out what different features there are between tuberculosis of rural people and of townsmen with respect to its onset, contrived to undertake a survey on national basis by means of the following two methods:one of them a survey by “written enquiry” system of in-patients admittei to 77 hospitals in different parts of this land; and the other a survey by “personal interview” system conducted by hymself at the 25 geographically representative hospitals of this country.
Many of the results obtained from the present survey were congruous with the reports previously published by various researchers, but some of them were different. Among the findings of particular interest, there was an even lower level of familial aggregation of tuberculous patients in rural areas than in urban areas, which was contradictory to the traditional concept.It may be taken as a manifestation of the changes in the behavior of tuberculosis in rural areas.Also obtained were several findings suggestive of the important role played by the mental and physical burden of rural women in their contraction of tuberculosis.