486 ANNUAL REPORT OP THE Off. DoC. 



such animals alive. Then.', need be uo hesitation in pressing for Ihis 

 reform, because the measures demanded are in the interests of the 

 owners of cattle, and would be advisable even if it were established 

 that bovine tuberculosis is not transmissible to man. There is no 

 dispute as to the danger of visibly tuberculous animals to others 

 of their own species, and it is the very reverse of a hardship to the 

 owner of such animals to insist on their beiug slaughtered. 



It would probably be regarded as a serious omission if I did not 

 refer to one other method of counteracting whatever danger at 

 present attaches to impure milk as a cause of human tuberculosis. 

 No matter how highly charged milk may be with tubercle bacilli, 

 it can be deprived of all danger from that source by raising it to 

 the temperature known to be fatal to these germs. Less than the 

 boiling temperature (212 degrees Fahrenheit) suflices for this pur- 

 pose; but, unfortunately, the lowest temperature that can be relied 

 upon imparts to the milk a flavor that many people find distasteful. 

 That objection does not hold good in the case of infants and young- 

 children, and the custom of boiling or steaming the nursery milk for 

 a few minutes cannot be made too general. But while abstinence 

 from uncooked milk is a sure way of avoiding infection with bacilli 

 present in that article of food, it cannot for a moment be admitted 

 that this absolves public health authorities from all concern with 

 the subject. Arsenical beer may be made harmless by adding the 

 proper antidote before drinking it, but the most courageous brewer 

 would not plead this as an excuse for selling the impure article. 



In conclusion, I would venture to express the earnest hope that the 

 Congress will not endorse the view that it is inadvisable to take any 

 measures to prevent the transmission of tuberculosis from the lower 

 animals to human beings. To justify the introduction of measures 

 to that end it is not necessary to contend that this is a common 

 method of infection, or that the danger arising from milk can for a 

 moment be compared with that present in human sputum. The in- 

 halation of tubercle bacilli expelled from the bodies of human 

 patients is doubtless the great cause of human tuberculosis, and 

 every practicable means of preventing infection in that way ought 

 to be employed; but, at the same time, we ought not to concede to 

 the milkmen the right to sell us tubercle bacilli, even if we were 

 assured that — like Dr. Koch's experimental pigs — we had nothing to 

 fear beyond the development of 'little nodules here and there in the 

 lymplialic glands' of onr necks and a 'few grey tubercles' in our 

 lungs." 



