Dimes to dollars, money best spent

‘Tis the season. Long before “holiday giving” became a catch phrase, a group sought to slow down America’s number one infectious killer, one penny at a time. So began Christmas Seals – the campaign which in 1907 set out to conquer the “white plague.”

A few readers will guess what that plague was, or is. Most won’t.

Indeed, visit the Christmas Seals website and see that the plague — tuberculosis (TB)— is but a turn-of-the-century footnote. The National Lung Association, which launched Christmas Seals, now focuses mostly on lung cancer, asthma and emphysema. By the time this century rolled around, TB effectively had been tamed on these shores.