318 Kansas Academy of Science. 



It has been found by investigation that a certain per cent of all 

 cases of tuberculosis, especially in children, was through the direct 

 result of the introduction of bovine bacillus into the human body 

 through the use of milk from cows that were tainted with the dis- 

 ease. Garnet made an investigation with regard to tubercle bacilli 

 being found in the air. This exposition was exceedingly interest- 

 ing. There were taken into consideration twenty-one wards of 

 seven hospitals, three asylums, two prisons, and the living rooms 

 of sixty-two tubercular patients, besides outdoor patients, public 

 streets, and inhalation experiments. Ninety- four susceptible ani- 

 mals were inoculated with the dust from hospital wards. Of these 

 twenty became tuberculous. Negative results were obtained from 

 the dust of surgical wards and from that of the streets. One hun- 

 dred and seventy animals were inoculated with the dust secured 

 from the living rooms of consumptives. Of this number thirty- 

 four became infected, and ninety-one of the 170 died from septic 

 diseases. We therefore infer that, as the dust was taken from the 

 walls, furniture and picture frames, it does not show an accurate, 

 specific virulence. During the years from 1863 to 1888 one of the 

 city wards of Philadelphia became of great interest. One-third of 

 the houses in the ward were infected, and one-half of the deaths 

 from tuberculosis occurred in the infected houses. 



During a term of twenty-five years a careful record was kept of 

 thirty-eight Catholic convents, whose yearly average was 1428 per- 

 sons. Strenuous efforts were made to secure only healthy inmates, 

 and yet the mortality from the great white plague was one-seventh 

 to one-fifth of all the deaths. We have to-day writers upon the 

 subject of tuberculosis who make the statement that it is intensely 

 contagious, that it is never hereditary, and that it is readily amenable 

 to treatment. These assertions, in the main, are extravagant. No 

 physician can make such unqualified statements, and they are not 

 justifiable. He has no data to prove that the disease is intensely 

 contagious, nor can he assert with any degree of assurance that it 

 is never in any sense hereditary. Neither can he say truthfully that 

 it is readily amenable to treatment. Our knowledge of the disease 

 and its treatment is as yet too crude to warrant us in making such 

 positive assertions. 



The infection of tubercle may take place on a mucous surface, 

 as the ear, nose and mouth, and by ingestion of the bacillus; or it 

 may be transmitted through the agency of the blood. The primary 

 cause being the tubercle bacilli, when they reach a point of least 

 resistance, then and there the destructive process begins, the focus 



