138 Bureau of Faemers' Institutes. 



that tuberculous cow just mentioned may be further contami- 

 nated by bacilli from a human being before it reaches the con- 

 sumer, and the bacilli from the human may establish disease, 

 while the bacilli from the cow prove inert. Consumption in 

 people is so common that physicians have unlimited facilities to 

 study, its aetiology. For instance, in New York State the deaths 

 from this disease for eight years from 1888 to 1895 were 104,804, 

 an average of 13,100 a year, and it averaged about eleven per cent, 

 of all deaths. The annual report of our State Board of Health 

 for 1896 says: " Tuberculosis in some form or other accounts for 

 a very large percentage of the deaths in the State, and when it 

 is known that there is at the present time a large amount of meat 

 consumed from tuberculous cattle, and that milk from such cattle 

 enters into the dietary of the people, and that there is danger 

 when the bacillus is ingested, it is believed to be a most potent 

 source of infection, especially in children." Note the expression, 

 believed to be, and if we read from scores of writers on this sub- 

 ject, we shall find that when they come to this point they all hide 

 behind just such terms. Where are their facts, and why do they 

 not give us some positive statements, with convincing illustra- 

 tions of the methods by which they proved to themselves that 

 such was the case? Too long have writers worn the thinking 

 caps of others, too confidently have they accepted the statements 

 of supposed authorities. There has been too much heredity in 

 ideas and quotations. Practically all the people of the State 

 eat the products of cattle all their lives, and tuberculosis in cattle 

 is well distributed throughout the State. Now, then, if the dis- 

 ease passes readily to man, even laymen should be able to note 

 the fact where large numbers of cattle are infected. But they, 

 and their physicians, and their veterinarians have merely pre- 

 sumed, imagined, believed, supposed, and concluded that such 

 " might be the case." One thing is well known, viz., that 13,000 

 human consumptives give off enough infective material annually 

 to account for all the human tuberculosis in the State without 

 the aid of a single bovine. 



