138 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that a more liberal policy in spending public 

 money for river and harbor improvements 

 would, in the long run, be the most eco- 

 nomical. 



The Bamboo as a Food. — Young bam- 

 boo shoots are eaten by the Chinese and 

 Japanese as we eat asparagus. Dr. Lamou- 

 nier, who has a collection in his garden at 

 Verneuil, France, tried two or three species 

 at a right age, and found them excellent. 

 The stalks should be taken very young 

 during the first fortnight of spring growth, 

 and should not be more than fifteen cen- 

 timetres thick. The outer envelopes of 

 spathes are taken off, and the soft substance 

 is left, crisp and brittle, and yielding easily 

 to the pressure of the finger. Dr. Lamou- 

 nier says they have the general taste and fla- 

 vor of Brussels sprouts, and that they are 

 wholesome, easily digestible, and economical. 

 But all depends on the time of cutting and the 

 preparation. Some canned bamboo, exhib- 

 ited by the Japanese at Paris in 1889, was 

 found hard and flavorless. We have these 

 differences, too, in asparagus and all vege- 

 tables, while we judge the quality of the 

 same from their best, not from their worst. 



Tuberculosis and Meat Inspection. — In 



a paper presented to the New York Academy 

 of Medicine during last November, Prof. 

 Leonard Pearson, of the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, gave a resume of the recent work of 

 foreign veterinarians on bovine tuberculosis. 

 We take the following points from a reprint 

 of the address in the Dietetic and Hygenic 

 Gazette. " This subject," he says, " has 

 been a live one in Europe for many years, 

 and has received much attention ever since 

 it was shown by Villimen, in 1868, that the 

 disease could be transmitted from one ani- 

 mal to another, and more especially since the 

 discovery of the tubercle bacillus by Koch in 

 1882 and the consequent establishment of 

 the fact that the tuberculosis of men and 

 the lower animals is the same disease and 

 caused by the same germ. Most of the Eu- 

 ropean countries now have a system of 

 meat inspection, which is carried out most 

 carefully in the great centers of population, 

 and usually assures the consumer against 

 harmful flesh. The question as to what 

 shall be done with tuberculous carcasses has 



excited much discussion. There is prac- 

 tically unanimity regarding the immediate 

 and entire destruction of the carcasses of 

 animals that show generalized tuberculosis, 

 or tuberculosis with marked emaciation, but 

 the cases of localized tuberculosis are much 

 more common, amounting Ln some places to 

 fifteen or eighteen per cent of all cattle 

 slaughtered. The careful experiments, how- 

 ever, of Chauveau, Nocard, Bollinger, Bang, 

 and McFadyan have shown that the flesh of 

 animals with local tuberculosis is not infec- 

 tious. It has been shown, however, that if 

 there are any tuberculous spots the butcher 

 is likely to get infected material from this 

 spot on his knife and spread it more or less 

 generally over the carcass. At the Inter- 

 national Veterinary Congress held last Sep- 

 tember in Berne, it was decided by resolu- 

 tion that the flesh of tuberculous animals 

 should be condemned when the carcass is 

 emaciated, when it has a general bad ap- 

 pearance, when tubercles are found in the 

 muscular portions, and when alterations are 

 found in several organs. It was also recom- 

 mended, in relation to the flesh of slightly 

 tuberculous animals, that it be permitted to 

 go on the market, but that it be sold in 

 special shops or stalls, or sterilized and sold 

 as cooked meat. In Germany the practice is 

 to condemn the worst cases, sterilize those 

 that are less extensive, and to pass as sound 

 the slightly developed cases, after destroying 

 the affected parts. A very important point 

 in connection with this subject is in refer- 

 ence to the payment of indemnity to the 

 owner of the condemned animal or carcass. 

 It is felt that, as the animal is condemned 

 for the good of the public, they should bear 

 part of the loss. Already in France it is the 

 custom to compensate the owners of infect- 

 ed animals which are destroyed. The con- 

 sideration of the milk from tuberculous cows 

 is also of great importance. Numei-ous in- 

 vestigations have demonstrated that the milk 

 of cows with tuberculosis of the udder will 

 cause tuberculosis in a very large percentage 

 of the animals fed upon it. Ostertag recom- 

 mends that the milk from cows with tuber- 

 culosis of the udder should be excluded from 

 consumption, and that from cows which re- 

 act to tuberculin, but show no evidence of 

 tuberculosis of the udder, should be sterilized 

 before sale. In a recent report from the 



