142 Bulletin 65. 



If we now consider the frightful prevalence of tuberculosis in 

 the human race, that here in New York every eighth person dies 

 of tuberculosis, that in cities like Vienna 85 per cent, of the peo- 

 ple suffer from it, and that in our own cities 30 to 50 per cent, 

 contract it at some period of life, we see what a fearful risk is 

 being run b}^ the utilization of the meat and milk of animals so 

 affected, even if it could be shown that such meat and milk were 

 in themselves free from the living bacillus. Such reckless con- 

 sumption of the products of tuberculous animals can onlj-be looked 

 on as a direct means of sealing the fate of that large proportion 

 of the community which are already slightly affected with tuber- 

 culosis. 



The claim that the canning of tuberculous carcasses and the 

 boiling or Pasteurizing of milk does away with every element of 

 danger can no longer be entertained. Sterilization is not a restora- 

 tion to a non-poisonous condition ; it does away with the possibil- 

 ity of infection, it is true, but it does not render the product in- 

 nocuous. 



As a matter of fact Koch's tuberculin has been sterilized by 

 heat, but this has not by any means rendered it safe and harmless. 

 On the contrary it invariably intensifies any existing tuberculous 

 process and develops fever and general constitutional disorder. 

 When tuberculin, therefore, is present in meat and milk it can only 

 cause these to operate in the same waj^ on subjects that have been 

 already infected. In my experience with tuberculous cows, cases 

 have come to my knowledge in which invalids drinking the milk 

 of such animals have suffered very obviously and have improved 

 after such milk was withheld. So too in the case of calves suck- 

 ing phthisical cows ; they have done badly and proved unthrifty 

 though they took the whole of the milk furnished by their re- 

 spective nurses, and they have thriven better when weaned and 

 put upon solid food alone. I have followed some such calves 

 until they grew up and were slaughtered, and have made post- 

 mortem examinations and found them bearing old calcified tuber- 

 cles pointing back to the time when they sucked the infected and 

 poisonous milk. 



It is idle to say that such milk was merely lacking in nutritive 

 principles : — the calves in question had access to other food, while 



