TUBERCULOSIS. 331 



dysphagia and tympany when located in the pharyngeal glands ; 

 to purident discharge when involving the penis of the male, 

 uterus or vagina of the female ; and colic, with alternating con- 

 stipation and diarrhoea, and flatulency after food, particularly if 

 the liver be involved. The pericardium may be consider- 

 ably affected without apparent symptoms, but after a time 

 signs of cardiac irregularities become more and more apparent 

 (see Heart Diseases), and sometimes the external lymphatic 

 glands are enlarged ; whilst in other cases an animal apparently 

 quite healthy manifests symptoms of lameness from no assign- 

 able cause, and this lameness is generally irremoveable, resisting 

 all treatment, and after death the bones or joints present the 

 usual characteristics of tubercular disease. 



Tuberculosis, when affecting the mammary gland, is very 

 frequently secondary to its development in other organs, but is 

 supposed to be occasionally primary. Bang, Copenhagen, de- 

 scribes the condition as a diffuse, painless, hard swelling, involv- 

 ing one or more quarters of the gland, but generally the posterior 

 ones. It differs from an ordinary inflammation of the mammary 

 gland — mamynitis or mastitis — in which the milk is curdled at 

 commencement ; but in the tubercular form the milk is at first 

 normal, but at the end of a month it becomes watery, contains 

 clots, and sometimes bacilli. 



Bacilli are found with great difficulty ; and Bollinger states 

 that in fifty-five per cent, of examined cows where the milk was 

 virulent the bacilli could only be found once in twenty cases. 

 There is therefore great danger to human life when the milk of 

 tuberculous cows is made use of as food. No doubt innumerable 

 cases of consumption are thus induced in the Iniman being, par- 

 ticularly that form of tubercular disease tabes mescnterica, so 

 common in young children. 



It must be particularly borne in mind by the veterinarian 

 that, as a conservator of public health, he should at all times 

 discountenance the consumption of the unboiled milk of tuber- 

 culous cattle not only by human beings, but by the lower animals, 

 for it has been abundantly proved that the milk of a tuberculous 

 cow will, unless boiled, be dangerous to life ; and when we reflect 

 upon the fact that it is so largely consumed, particularly by in- 

 fants and young cliildren, we can at least imagine the appalling 

 consequences it may give rise to without being boiled. 



The danger to human life from the injjestion of the milk of a 



