100 THE MILK QUESTION 



ducted by the British Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, 

 sixty cases of the disease from human beings were exam- 

 ined, with the result that fourteen proved to be infected 

 from bovine sources. Ravenal, Theobald Smith, and 

 others added like testimony, but by far the largest and most 

 valuable series of cases were studied by Park and Krum- 

 wiede, of the Research Laboratory of the Department of 

 Health of New York City. Park, Krumwiede, and their 

 associates determined the nature of the tubercle bacilli in 

 436 cases of tuberculosis in human beings. Of the persons 

 examined 297 were over sixteen years of age, and in these 

 cases only one, which happened to be a case of renal infec- 

 tion, gave bacilli of the bovine type. Of the 297 cases 

 examined in persons over sixteen years of age, 278 had 

 pulmonary tuberculosis. The figures were quite different 

 in the cases examined under sixteen years of age. Thus, of 

 fifty-four cases of children between five and sixteen years, 

 nine had the bovine bacillus. Still more striking are the 

 figures in young children. Thus, twenty-two out of eighty- 

 four cases under five years of age had the bovine bacillus. 



In all, 1040 cases of human tuberculosis have been sim- 

 ilarly studied. In not a single case of pulmonary tuber- 

 culosis in this series have bacilli of undoubted bovine type 

 been found. 1 



A large proportion of the human cases infected with the 

 bovine type consists of infection of the abdomen, or of the 

 glands of the neck. 



The fact that bovine tuberculosis is frequently fatal, 

 especially in children, may be divined from the fact that 

 fifteen per cent of the fatal cases of tuberculosis in children 

 under five years of age that have been studied, were due to 

 the bovine type of bacillus. To sum up : From five to seven 

 per cent of all human tuberculosis is ascribed to infection 

 with the bovine bacillus. Further, bovine tuberculosis 



1 In one or two instances not included in these figures the bovine 

 tubercle bacillus has been found in pulmonary consumption. 



