THE PRESENCE IN MILK OF CERTAIN ORGANISMS 255 



But many cases of abdominal tuberculosis in children recover, 

 though what proportion of these is due to the bovine bacillus 

 and what to the human, we have no means of knowing at present. 

 The cases of cervical gland tuberculosis investigated by us were 

 all cases that recovered or were recovering after operation, and a 

 large proportion of them were bovine in origin. . . . We are con- 

 vinced that measures for securing the prevention of ingestion of 

 living bovine tubercle bacilli with milk would greatly reduce the 

 number of cases of abdominal and cervical gland tuberculosis in 

 children, and that such measures should include the exclusion from 

 the food supply of the milk of the recognisably tuberculous cow, 

 irrespective of the site of the disease, whether in the udder or in 

 the internal organs.' 



Investigations together with summaries of other cases in- 

 vestigated by different authors have been prepared by Park and 

 Krumwiede. These authors have worked up the percentage of 

 bovine infections occurring in children who were found to be 

 affected with tubercle, causing their death, or who had died from 

 other causes, and were found post-mortem to contain also tuber- 

 culous lesions. The table given below is taken from their paper 

 and gives the incidence of infection only. 



Percentage Incidence of Bovine Infection 



The authors state : * In our own series of non-selected fatal 

 cases under five years of age bovine infection constituted I2j per 

 cent. We had nine cases under six years of age, who were ex- 

 clusively cow's milk fed, from a foundling asylum. Of these, 

 five were bovine infections. If the fatal cases in this series are 

 deducted from the total cases, the bovine infections comprise 

 about 10 per cent. In a non-selected series of fatal cases from 

 the Babies' Hospital 6$- per cent, were due to bovine infection. 



