710 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 



the home. I am very doubtful of this, and would prefer to see 

 provision for all consumptives in the form of institutions. Before 

 notification is enforced there should be some place for the con- 

 sumptive to go to. 



Finally, I think that the whole control of measures instituted 

 against tuberculosis should be in the hands of a central authority. 



Dr. BoELKE said : You have probably all seen articles in our 

 scientific papers in which the authors gave the results of their 

 investigations into the incidence of tuberculosis after using von 

 Pirquet's test. Hamburger of Vienna states that he had 94 per 

 cent, of positive reactions in cases of 17 years of age. Nothman 

 gives his results as 100 per cent, at the same age limit. Many other 

 investigators publish similar results. When this test became known 

 some years ago I tried it on many children and adults, with the 

 result that all the adults gave a positive reaction. I therefore had 

 to abandon it, at any rate as far as adults were concerned. But 

 the tests showed that even here in Australia the number of people 

 who became infected at some period of their lives is very much 

 gi-eater than one would expect. Fortunately the infection must 

 have been very mild, considering that most of these people were 

 never even aware of the fact that they had been infected, and that, 

 without changing their mode of living in any way they never 

 showed any symptom of tuberculosis. 



In view of the wide distribution of the source of the infecting 

 agent, and the mildness of the nature of the disease in most cases, 

 I would judge that most of these people had contracted the malady 

 by taking some tainted food, most probably milk, which contained 

 tubercle bacilli. I make this statement because I am firmly con- 

 vinced that the bacillus which we find in animal food, that is the 

 bovine bacillus, although much more prevalent is much less virulent 

 in the case of human beings than the human type of tubercle 

 bacillus. The question arises, how is it possible to check infection 

 of this kind ? The supervision of our meat supply is fairly strict, 

 and probably very little tubercular meat is sold. As regards our 

 milk supply, I am afraid that much can still be done to improve it. 

 Most of the measuies adopted so far aim at the prevention of the 

 further adulteration of milk, but in many cases this milk already 

 contains living tubercle bacilli. Pasteurisation certainly will kill 

 these bacilli, but it would be difficult to convince me, and' I think 

 most medical men, that such milk is as good as fresh, unboiled milk. 

 The whole question is one of £.s.d. Compensate the farmers, and 

 they will be only too glad to have their herds tested and the infected 

 animals destroyed, but I am afraid that the expense would be 

 beyond the resources of the State. There is only one other way 

 out of the difficulty, so far as I can see, and that is to induce farmers 

 to have the tuberculin test applied, and the infected cows destroyed, 

 by giving the farmer a certificate guaranteeing the freedom of their 

 dairies from tuberculosis. Of course these tests would have to be 



