179 



" bacteria will be found in the blood, organs, and 

 " tissues." * 



Academic instances of inoculation like the above 

 can only take place, through the limitations imposed 

 by our laws, under strictly narrow conditions, and are 

 therefore necessarily outside the experience of ordinary 

 people, whether they be medical or lay : they are 

 however worthy of our most careful attention. In the 

 first place it is of the highest importance to realize 

 that the introduction into the tissues of a fragment of 

 hard-boiled egg, a substance which contains not one 

 solitary bacillus, that can by any pretence be called a 

 tubercle bacillus, but which does contain the ordinary 

 bacilli of putrefaction, is followed by the development 

 within two or three days of a cheesy nodule. Would 

 any one have the temerity to say that such a caseous 

 deposit was tuberculosis ? And yet if nodules of 

 exactly the same character, and produced by and con- 

 taining similar bacilli, are found to exist in the 

 tissues of a bird which has contracted them by infec- 

 tion in the ordinary way and not by inoculation, this 

 one manifestation is held by our bird fanciers and 

 others to be sufficiently indicative of tuberculosis to 

 absolve the observer from the trouble of any further 

 investigation ! 



In the second place, and quite apart from this in- 

 trinsic value, these experiments are of considerable 

 importance in that they help us to understand the true 

 nature of certain troubles which now and then happen 

 spontaneously to our captive birds, and which I have 

 never yet seen ascribed to their proper cause. If a 

 bird becomes "ill and ailing" and capricious in its 

 feeding, and in addition gradually loses flesh, while at 

 the same time one or more of the distal joints of either 

 one or both of its feet become swollen and red, it is 

 usually said to be suffering from gout. On this 



•R.H.Clarke. The Biui Plague. Fvir aud Feather Office. 1898. Page 13. 



