1902.] DISCUSSION. 277 



kept through the winter, and this present fall with other ani- 

 mals, at the age of a year and a half, was sold with a lot of 

 other young stock. At the time of the sale no signs of the 

 disease were apparent. 



All this shows the uncertainty of such investigation, but, 

 at the same time, it does show one thing, and that is: if you 

 get the disease once established in your herd you are very 

 liable to " get it bad," as the boys say, and the only way 

 to get rid of it when you " get it bad " is to root it out, horns 

 and hoofs and top to bottom. If you root it out thoroughly 

 and disinfect your barns thoroughly so as to destroy the 

 germs, and then take great pains not to introduce any in- 

 fected stock upon your farm, and to see that your stock is 

 tested with tuberculin test, you can probably keep free from 

 the disease. The tuberculin test is the best test that I know of 

 today for detecting the presence of the disease. 



I agree with Prof. Atwater and Prof. Conn and others 

 that we have had altogether too much of a scare with regard 

 to the danger to the public health, or to human beings from 

 tuberculosis in cattle. The danger of tuberculosis getting 

 into the human family from the bovine family, or from the 

 products of the bovine family is not as great as it was once 

 thought. I am inclined to feel sure that we have not made a 

 strong enough impression upon our farmers that where the 

 danger to them lies is in the destruction which will come to 

 their herds if the disease once becomes permanently estab- 

 lished in them. That, at the present time, seems to me to be 

 the important side of the question, because experience has 

 demonstrated over and over again that unless extremely radi- 

 cal measures are used to get rid of it it will ultimately mean 

 the utter and complete destruction of not only all profit from 

 our herds, but of the herds themselves. When it is once 

 established in a herd, unless you do adopt radical measures to 

 suppress it, it is sure to increase, and all your profits from 

 the herd are pretty sure to be wiped out. That, as it seems 



