PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 1035 
having their registration cancelled, or by other proceedings being 
instituted.” The Report further states that “it is certain that 
the proportion of dairy stock suffering from this disease (viz., 
tuberculosis) is much smaller than in European countries. There 
are yet the strongest reasons for stamping out the cases that are 
discovered, not only to arrest the spread of the disease among the 
cattle, but also because of the serious risk of the tuberculous 
matter contained in the milk causing consumption of the lungs in 
the human beings who use it.” 
The secret of failure is pre-eminently apparent. Only a few 
weeks ago, and since writing the foregoing, Dr. Gresswell, the 
eminent Chairman of the Victorian State Health Board, publicly 
stated that reforms were seriously demanded. They must neces- 
sarily be slow, he said, more especially where administration was 
local and not central. ‘“ Legislation,” he further said, “‘ was being 
prepared in Victoria which ‘he ho yped would go far towards reme- 
dying most of the evils which so tenaciously clung to our meat 
and milk supplies.” This expression of views comes as a hopeful 
forecast ; but unless the lines of the legislation suggested are dif- 
ferent from the legislation of to day, the same disappointing tale 
of failure will have again to be told. I can add no word to what 
has been repeatedly urged upon the public with the object of 
arresting their attention to the scourge of consumption. I will 
not indulge i in dragging before you a series of figures to show that 
in every colony it stands first upon the list of fatal diseases, The 
time was when the medical art stood hopelessly by, and, in com- 
mon with mankind generally, deplored its ravages ; but the time 
is changed, and encouragement comes from many quarters that 
the time is not far off when its power will be broken, and its 
course rendered as amenable to control as the course of typhus 
fever or small-pox has now become. (Dr.) Sir Thorne Thorne’s 
words at the Guildhall banquet in June last are worthy of repeti- 
tion :—‘* When the Queen ascended the throne, cousumption was 
a terrible disease in this land ; the deaths from consumption were 
one-quarter of the whole mortality of the country. Every year 
the Queen lost 50,000 of her subjects by deaths ‘from consump- 
tion, and for a long time we did not know it was a preventable 
diseas eventable as typhus or any other disease which 
arises from fever ; and, now that we know that, we are beginning 
to get control over it, and the reduction is going on, I am glad to 
say, very rapidly. When the Queen came to the throne, from 
400 to 500 persons died out of every 100,000 of the population 
from consumption. Well, we have reduced it now to 140 per 
100,000. That is a great deal too much still, but it is a very 
great reduction. It is a very satisfactory reduction, but the 
death-rate is still far too high; and, now that we know the con- 
dition in which consumption, like typhus, is a preventable disease 
