526 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



little else than for the sake of tidiness, the butcher removes in pre- 

 paring his joint for sale, and that consists inter alia of bits of gland 

 and serous membranes. But, though he had been at some pains to 

 secure that this trimming was done with efficiency, there proved to be 

 no constant line between the trimmed and the untrimmed meat in its 

 effects upon test animals. 



He now came to see a real and considerable danger to the meat, of 

 the same nature as that which he had previously sought to estimate 

 when he was careful about the trimming of meat, — a danger that 

 was somewhat less obvious, but would be quite as real. This was, 

 the probability of the meat becoming contaminated from the actual 

 tuberculous lesions, present in other parts of the carcass, and con- 

 veyed from thence to the proper meat substauce by the hands, knives 

 and cloths of the butcher, during the processes of flaying and dressing. 

 This was a danger that would doubtless increase along with increased 

 abundance of the material of tubercle in the carcass. ' ' The greater 

 the amount of tubercle there is in the cow, the more likely is the 

 sticky caseous matter to get smeared over the carcass;" and much 

 that was inexplicable in the results of feeding and inoculation of test 

 animals would be rendered intelligble. 



Dr. Martin wi'ites : "If we imagine that the meat gets contami- 

 nated accidentally in this way, it is easy to explain the irregularity 

 of the results : (1) how, for example, in cases of mild tuberculosis 

 of the cow, the danger of contamination is not great, and therefore 

 the meat does not get smeared to any extent during removal, so that 

 no positive results were obtained by feeding, and only one positive 

 result by inoculation, and this a case of local tuberculosis, showing 

 a small dose; (2) how, in cases of moderate tuberculosis, where 

 chiefly the lungs and lymphatic glands in the thorax are affected (and 

 so may be removed entire without incision of a tuberculous lesion) , 

 the meat, as in cases of mild tuberculosis, would not become much 

 contaminated, and thus did not produce tuberculosis by feeding ; and 

 how in these cases the knife is more likely accidently to incise a 

 tuberculous lesion than in cases of mild tuberculosis, and that there- 

 fore the number of cases of positive inoculation is greater. . . . 

 With generalized tuberculosis of the cow this danger would increase, 

 since so many parts of the body are affected with the disease, so that 

 in such cases we meet for the first time with positive results from 

 feeding, but not uniformly positive . . . 



"Taking all the results together, the method of removal of the 

 meat, the results of inoculation and of feeding, one is driven to the 

 conclusion that when meat is infective it commonly acquired its prop- 

 erties by being accidentally contaminated with tuberculous material 



