47G ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



TUBEKCLE BACILLI IN COWS' MILK AS A POSSIBLE SOURCE 

 TUBERCULOUS DISEASE IN MAN. 



"As recently as a few days ago, when I was mentally arranging 

 the material for the paper which I have now the great honor of sub- 

 mitting to this Congress, I was under the impression that it would 

 not be necessary to formally prove that the term tuberculosis as 

 it is oow employed by medical men and veterinary surgeons relates 

 to one and the same disease. I thought that I might ask my audi- 

 ence to accept it as proved, and generally admitted, that tuberculosis 

 in man is caused by a single definite species of organism — the tuber- 

 cle bacillus — that this organism is also the cause of the disease to 

 which veterinary surgeons apply the term tuberculosis in the case 

 of cattle and other domesticated species, and that there therefore 

 existed a prima facie case against the germs formed in the bodies 

 of tuberculous animals as a possible source of tuberculous disease 

 in human bei«gs. 



To-day, however, the position of anyone who undertakes to discuss 

 the inter-communicabilit}' of human and bovine tuberculosis is very 

 different from what it would have been a week ago, for in the inter- 

 val the greatest living authority on tuberculosis — the world-re- 

 nowned discoverer of the tubercle bacillus, and the man to whom we 

 are mainly indebted for our knowledge of the cause of tuberculosis — 

 has declared his conviction that human and bovine tuberculosis are 

 practically two distinct diseases. I do not know how far the rea- 

 sons assigned by Dr. Koih for the opinion which he now holds on 

 this question may have commended themselves to the members of 

 this Congress, and I am overwhelmed at finding myself in a position 

 which com[)els me to otTei' some criticism on the pronouncement of 

 one, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. 



That bovine and human tuberculosis are indentical diseases was 

 generally supposed to have been finally determined by Dr. Koch him- 

 scir. when he discovered that the liuinau and the bovine lesions con- 

 tained bacilli lliaf were identical in morphological, tinctorial, and 

 cultural characters, and showed that the artificial cultures from both 

 sources produced indistinguishable effects when they were employed 

 to infect a variety of animals. The labors of hundreds of workers 

 during the succeeding eighteen years produced nothing in serious 



