BY C. J. POUND, F.R.M.S. XXV 



houses in London, some of which had as many as 50, GO, and 

 70 per cent, of their cows affected with tuhercnlosis. 



Causes of Tuberculosis. — Up to (piite recently medical men, 

 veterinary surgeons and the public generally looked upon tuber- 

 culosis as a true type of hereditary diseases. Even at the 

 present day stockbreeders will endeavour to bring i'orwnrd, 

 apparently, the most convincing evidence from their point of 

 view to support this supposition ; but the statistics obtained from 

 the various continental abattoirs disagree with this theory 

 almost entirely ; in fact all the inspectors are of the one opinion 

 that there is nothing more rare than tuberculosis of the calf. 

 Here are some figures demonstrating this point :— At the Munich 

 abattoir 160,000 calves are slaughtered yearly on an avei-uge, and 

 out of this number there ha\e been found tuberculous - two in 

 1878, one in 1S79, none in 1880, none in lSHl,and two in LS82, 

 At Lyons, M. Leclerc, who has taken a particular interest in this 

 •fpiestion, has only found five tuberculous calves out of 100,000 

 slaughtered at the pul)Iic abbattoir. At Rouen, Veysierre has 

 found three out of 60,000. At Berlin, Johne has found four out 

 of more than 150,000. In Prussia, from April 1, ]Si)i{, to 

 March 31, 1H98, there were slaughtered in the pul)lic uhattoirs 

 '600,501 adult cattle, of which 52,186 were tuberculous, or H-()8 

 per cent ; and 914,216 calves, of which only 116 were tuber- 

 culous, or a little less than -01 per cent. To tlioroughly appreciate 

 these figures, it must not be forgotten, as Nocard points out, 

 that everywhere the number of tuberculous cows is iniiniiely 

 greater than that of other cattle. 



Among the various hereditary and predisposing causes which 

 may be regarded as factors to diminish the resisting propci-ties 

 of the animal tissues to the action of the tubercle bacillus, are 

 unhealthy surroundings, close and ill-ventilated IniiMini^s, (hirk 

 stables, insufficient or unwholesome food, breeding too young or 

 too frequently, or late breeding, overfeeding to secure an abnormal 

 production of milk — in fact, any treatment of cattle that tends 

 to debilitate or over-stimulate — ruuiy be consideied as a pi'edis- 

 IDOsing cause. These conditions, some of which are too often 

 imposed, require the very serious consideration of the breeder of 

 stud cattle, those engaged in raising store cattle, the producer of 



