20 



exacting couditious aud with every possible piecautiou agaiust con- 

 tamiuatiou. 



Before tlie farm buiidiugs were used at ail they were thoroughly 

 cleaned from top to bottom. Every portion of old manure was 

 carted away, as well as all the old earth. The whole of the wood- 

 work was scrubbed aud then washed with corrosive sublimate solution 

 (1 : lOUO) and liuaily whitewashed, aud every care was taken to 

 secure good drainage and free ventilatiou. The result and effective- 

 ness of all this have been best demonstrated by liie fact that every 

 animal brought to the place made a most marked improvement in its 

 general coudiLiou, wliile some of them even went so far as to appear 

 to get well. 



In deciding whether the milk from any cow affected with tubercu- 

 losis is dangerous, when the udder shows no lesion, the first point is 

 to see whether the milk contains the infectious principle or not. In 

 thi« case, of course, that infectious principle is the bacillus of tuber- 

 culosis, aud attention was turned to that for some time. The obser- 

 vations have l)een carried ou over a long space of time, and were 

 made as follows : The milk was taken Irom the cow in the morning 

 — or evening, as the case might be — the udders and teats having just 

 been thoroughly cleaned. The receptacle was an Erlenmeyer flask, 

 stoppered with cotton-wool and thoroughly sterilized by heat. The 

 specimen was taken at once to the laboratory, there placed in conical 

 glasses, with ground-glass covers — the whole of these having been 

 carefully cleansed beforehand — and then allowed to stand in a clean 

 refrigerator for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, aud sometimes for 

 seventy-two hours. 



At the end of that time from ten to twenty cover-glass prepara- 

 tions were made from various parts (;f the milk or cream. These 

 were stained after Ehrlich's twenty-four hour method, with fuchsin 

 and methylene blue as a contrast color, and then searched with an 

 immersion lens. 



We prepared for examination in the wa}' spoken of above, one 

 hundred and seventeen sets of cover glasses from as many different 

 samples of milk. Of these specimens three spoiled, i. e., turned 

 sour or acid before the examination was completed, aud must be 

 rejected, leaving, therefore, one hundred and fourteen samples of 

 milk of which the examination was completed. These samples were 

 obtaiued from thirty-six different cows, all of them presenting more 

 or less distinct signs of tuberculosis of the lungs or elsewhere, 

 but none of them having marked signs of disease of the udder of 

 any kind. 



Of these samples of milk there were found seventeen in which the 

 bacilli of tuberculosis were distinctly present ; that is to say, the 

 actual virus was seen in \0-\- per cent, of the samples examined 

 (17 : 114=10-^). These seventeen samples of infectious milk came 

 from ten different cows, showing a percentage of detected infectious- 

 ness of 27.7 per cent. (10 : 36=27.7). These results are exceedingly 

 interesting, it seems to me, aud I confess I am surprised at the size 



