186 CONFERENCE ON MILK PROBLEMS 



losis, as well as incidentally to enteric fever and other milk- 

 borne diseases. The first paper is by Dr. G. Lloyd Magruder 

 of Washington, who supplies some telling plates relative to 

 unwholesome cow-houses, ungroomed cows, and deposits from 

 dirty milk, and who lays great emphasis upon the importance 

 of the pasteurization of milk as an immediate preventive meas- 

 ure." 



The cattle of America are not, it is alleged, so commonly 

 affected with tuberculosis as those of Europe, but, notwith- 

 standing this, the Bureau of Animal Industry found that 33 

 per cent of the centrifuge slime examined at public creameries 

 showed tubercle bacilli. Dr. J. R. Mohler lays stress upon 

 the risk of contracting tuberculosis from milk, and draws at- 

 tention to the fact that the figures as regards primary intes- 

 tinal tuberculosis in children may range from % per cent 

 (Bovaird) to as high as 45.5 per cent (Heller) of the tuber- 

 culous cases examined. He reminds his readers that there is 

 conclusive evidence to show that tuberculous infection may be 

 taken through the intestinal tract without leaving any lesion 

 in the abdominal cavity, the first tuberculous deposits being 

 found in the lungs or the thoracic glands, a circumstance which 

 raises the question as to how far pulmonary tuberculosis in 

 infants, even in the absence of intestinal lesions, may not be 

 due to tuberculous milk. If this be so, the fact that from 15 

 to &5 per cent of all milch cows in the District of Columbia 

 are tuberculous is a very serious matter. Dr. Mohler then 

 goes on to deal with the risk of tuberculous infection from but- 

 ter and cheese, both of which have been shown experimentally 

 to be capable, if made from tuberculous milk, of causing tuber- 

 culosis in guinea pigs. His chief recommendations are that 

 milk should either come from tuberculin-tested cattle or be ef- 

 ficiently pasteurized, and that all milch cows on dairy farms 

 should be tattooed or otherwise marked. To the same inter- 

 esting circular Dr. E. C. Schroeder, superintendent of the 

 experimental station at the Bureau of Animal Industry, fur- 

 nishes some very cogent reasons why we should protect our- 

 selves against infected dairy products. He points out that 

 tuberculosis has a unique place among pathological conditions, 

 inasmuch as it is one of the relatively small number of infec- 

 tious diseases that attack more than one species of animals, 



