BoviJSTE Tuberculosis in Its Relation to Man. 139 



Transmission from Human to Bovine. — It is of less interest to 

 physicians whether tuberculosis is transmitted from the human 

 to the bovine; still, if the disease is intercommunicable, as we are 

 assured it is, then it is equally important either way. I have not 

 been able to learn of a case where the disease was established in 

 a cow or a herd from human sputum. Dr. Cooper Curtice says: 

 " In 1897 I tested two hundred and forty cattle in the vicinity 

 of Saranac Lake, New York. Every one there supposed that I 

 would find tuberculosis in herds that fed in the fields where the 

 consumptive patients that resort to this place take their exercise. 

 Not one case was found." Not only this, but the herd of the 

 sanitarium had been previously tested with like results. If tuber- 

 culosis could be transferred to cattle from human beings, it 

 should certainly occur at such a place as Saranac Lake, a sani- 

 tarium where thousands of consumptives resort. Thus, while feed- 

 ing experiments may have been interpreted as showing in some 

 instances that infection from human to bovine were possible, it 

 seems very well established that the infection from man to cattle 

 does not obtain when consumptive people and healthy animals 

 occupy positions toward each other daily, which are calculated 

 to offer every opportunity for such transmission. 



Dr. Theobald Smith is certainly working in the right direction; 

 his article, A Comparative Study of Bovine Tubercle Bacilli and 

 of Human Bacilli from Sputum, is based upon scientific investi- 

 gation of a very high order, and his deductions go a long way 

 toward the establishment of the principles promulgated in this 

 paper. He says: 



" The absolute identity of tubercle bacilli infecting mam- 

 malia has been so generally assumed, and the assumption used 

 as a basis for the enactment of sanitary measures having for their 

 object the prevention of any transmission of tubercle bacilli from 

 animal to man, that anyone who would attempt to question this 

 identity must be prepared to meet considerable skepticism. Tak- 

 ing a broad biological position, we have every reason to examine 

 into the assumed identity of the bovine and the human' bacillus." 



Exactly, and we shall facilitate this important work in propor- 

 tion as we cease to be parrots in repeating what we have been 



