The Story of John M'Neil is Britain's first public health education film, produced in 1911 by Dr Halliday Sutherland.
The vectors of transmission of the disease are shown: sweeping up dust, coughing, spitting and sharing drinking vessels.
[citation needed] All members of the family are infected with TB and, when the oldest daughter visits the Tuberculosis dispensary, the "Edinburgh System" for the treatment, cure and prevention of the disease is applied.
At the time the film was made, the hospitals in which the urban poor might be treated did not want them on the basis that they would expose their existing patients to TB.
Only 22 minutes long, the film was aimed at mass audiences who regularly flocked to the relatively new and hugely popular form of entertainment, the cinema.