108 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
sage. He has been watching this matter very carefully year after year, 
and every year the percentage of the number of hogs that he has to 
reject on account of their having tuberculosis increases. Last year it was 
something astonishing. Where is this loss going to come eventually? 
On the farmer. The packers w^ill tell you it comes on the farmer to-day, 
because they could pay a better price if all of the stock they buy would 
pass the government inspection. 
How are you to detect tuberculosis in a herd? There is one certain and 
sure way, and that is by the tuberculin test. The consensus of opinion 
is that if properly applied, it is almost absolute. I have statistics from 
the government showing that of 23,869 animals which responded to the 
tuberculin test, 23,585 showed tuberculosis when slaughtered. That is a 
percentage of 98.8. I may go further and express my belief that practi- 
cally 100 per cent have tuberculosis, and I will give you one instance to 
demonstrate that. At the University of Wisconsin we slaughtered one 
animal last spring that showed no lesions when we examined it. We took 
the liver and other organs and examined them under the microscope, and 
the liver was absolutely full of these little tubercles. 
One fault that is found with the tuberculin test it that it is too deli- 
cate; it shows very small lesions. A tuberculosis nodule as big as a 
hickory nut will sometimes give as strong a reaction as the animal that 
has gone too far; and when an animal has gone too far, it will not respond 
to the tuberculin test. 
A very few simple rules must be observed in giving the tuberculin test. 
The cattle must be kept quiet. You must not take a bunch of cattle 
directly off the railroad train and test them. You must not drive them 
from one farm to another and test them that same night. You must 
take their temperatures carefully and not give them cold water while you 
are testing them. And you must get good tuberculin. 
W^hen you clean out your herd, what are you to do? Be perfectly sure 
that your stable is clean. We have taken scrapings from the mangers of 
stables where tuberculous cattle were kept which were simply loaded with 
these germs. The cow, exactly like the man, gets rid of a number of 
these germs in its saliva, and it sticks in the corners of the manger. 
In putting in new cattle you must be careful not to buy a cow which is 
tuberculous, because if you do you will spread the disease. Your cow 
may look well, but I have a lantern slide of an animal which took the first 
prize at Chicago that was simply riddled with tuberculosis. What is the 
explanation? Simply that a cow, like a man, if well fed and taken care 
of, is not going to lose flesh very rapidly with this disease. The disease 
may go all through the organs of the animal before it begins to lose flesh 
and get sick. I have seen men at a hospital the same way. So after 
cleaning out your herd and your stable, be sure to put in only healthy 
cattle, because one tuberculous cow will spread the disease down the 
rows of stalls, from the habit cows have of licking each others' noses. I 
will stake my reputation, and any other man who has studied the ques- 
tion will, that if you do that, and don't use factory skim milk or allow 
tuberculosis to get in, you will have a healthy herd until the crack of 
doom, because tuberculosis never starts of itself. You can have a cow 
weakly and ready for tuberculosis, but you will never get tubeculosis 
