BAKER ON MILK OF TUBERCULOUS COWS. 69 



INFECTIOUSNESS OF :MILK OF TUnEKCULOUS COWS. 



IIENKY B. BAKER, M. D., LANSING, MICHIGAN. 



Ill (liis ])ai)ei' it is my purpose to place on record the results of a 

 few ohservalions, to }»resent new groupings of facts jM-eviously recorded, 

 placing them in such connection wdth each other and with new ones 

 as lo reenforce conclusions formerly held, but now weakened and, in the 

 minds of some persons, destroyed by what I consider w^rong interpreta- 

 tions of facts, some of which have been recently observed; also to 

 present a few conclusions which seem to call for legislative and other 

 action. 



Dr. (t. Sims W^oodhead, the eminent bacteriologist and pathologist, 

 has said: 



"That tuberculosis could be produced by the ingestion of tuberculous 

 matter into the lower animals has been inferred since Jacobi's case of 

 tuberculosis in a dog, which had been in the habit of ingesting the 

 expectorations of a phthisical patient. Klebs, Chauveau, Gerlach, and 

 Orth, early in the controversy, claimed to have proved, by actual 

 experiment, that the milk, flesh, and caseous material from cattle 

 affected with tuberculosis would, when introduced alone or along wdth 

 other food into the alimentary canal of rabbits, etc., give rise to tubercu- 

 losis in the pharynx, in the lymphatic glands of the neck, the stomach, 

 intestine, omentum, liver, and spleen, and then later in other organs. 

 Further, in 1884, Bang, at the Copenhagen International Medical Con- 

 gress, made known the results of experiments on the milk from tubercu- 

 lous cows, in which he was able to demonstrate the presence of numer- 

 ous tubercle bacilli. Taking these two factors in turn, one cannot but 

 be struck by the difference of opinion, as regards the occurrence of 

 abdominal tuberculosis in children, held and expressed by physicians, 

 on the one hand, and by those who have frequent opportunities of 

 making examinations of the bodies of young patients who have suc- 

 cumbed to some form or other of tuberculosis, on the other."* 



So long as no such microorganism as the bacillus tuberculosis had 

 ever been found growing under natural conditions outside of a living 

 animal bodv, it was not difficult to believe that that bacillus w^as not 

 now a saprophyte, but universally, at the present time, a parasite; and 

 generally living in warm-blooded animals only. But since the discovery 

 of several other species of microorganisms similar to the bacillus 

 tuberculosis, and especially since the discovery of such an organism on 

 timothy hay, it has been common among persons wdio, although not 

 leaders in sanitary sciences, yet are leaders in other lines of thought, 

 to find doubts expressed by them as to the bacillus tuberculosis being 

 the sole specific cause of tuberculosis, in animals and in man, and 

 especially as to its being a strictly parasitic microorganism. 



There seem to me to be sufficient facts to enable us to come to a 

 positive conclusion on this subject. Let us briefly consider a few of 

 these facts. 



* Laboratory Reports, Royal College of Physicians, Edin. Vol. I, pp. 180-1. 



