NINTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 109 
until pou put the seed there. It is absolutely in our hands to clean up a 
herd and keep it clean, and the man that doesn't do it is either careless 
or ignorant. 
I think it is going to pay you from a purely practical standpoint to do 
this. I have a few figures here to show you what the condemnation 
means. Up to June 30, 1908, the United States government had inspected 
58,973,000 cattle, and had condemned about one per cent on account of 
tuberculosis. The economic loss to the farmer on these equals $2,882,000; 
and on the uninspected cattle it was $4,102,000. That is certainly worth 
saving. I could go further and give you theoretical figures which are no 
doubt true, regarding the depreciation on farms and loss of milk and 
breeding values. 
What can we say about the danger of tuberculous cattle to mankind? 
I have no doubt some of you will get up here and try to hammer me on 
what Professor Koch has said, and 1 want to give you a clear history of 
what he has said and what right he has to express an opinion. 
Professor Koch astounded the world in 1901 in London jy saying: "I 
therefore consider the two diseases (human and cattle tuberculosis) as 
being different. Human tuberculosis cannot be transmitted to cattle, and 
if the converse is true, it is so extremely rare that I consider measures 
against such transmission of no avail." In other words, "Go ahead and 
drink milk; there is no danger in it." You know that following that the 
German government appointed an Imperial commission, which was di- 
rected and governed by twenty-five of the leading professors in Germany, 
including Koch himself, to investigate this subject, and the work was done 
in Berlin. They have reported quite fully. They have found out of all 
the cases they examined that ten per cent were due to cattle tuberculosis, 
although they moved heaven and earth to sustain Koch. The English ap- 
pointed a royal commission at the same time, and the reports show that 
England is w^orse than Germany in this respect. The increase is ac- 
counted for by the fact that the laws in England are much more lax than 
in Germany. They find that 23 per cent of all the cases they examined 
are due to bovine tuberculosis; and if you limit those cases to those show- 
ing some Intestinal trouble, they find that 48 per cent are due to the 
bovine germ. 
What is Prof. Koch's standpoint at the present time? As you all know, 
he was in Washington the other day at the meeting of the Anti-Tubercu- 
losis Congress, and read a paper on this same question. Almost all th^ 
newspapers distorted what he said, and I presume the impression in this 
meeting is that Koch maintained his stand in London in 1901. These are 
almost the words he said: "I therefore consider that in the suppression 
of tuberculosis we must primarily direct our efforts against the human 
disease." Nobody else on God's green earth, except Von Behring of Ger- 
many, has ever had any other idea. While we recognize that cattle tuber- 
culosis is a great danger to human life, human t iberculosis is a greater. 
Just what the proportion of the two is I can't tell you. The English sta- 
tistics would apparently show that two thirds of the cases come from 
human sources and one-third from cattle sources. In our country, where 
our cattle are more healthy, the figures are different. I have never tried 
to guess at figures, but in children I believe the figures show that upward 
