334 VETERINARY LECTURES 



at the same table. I am stating my own family experience. Again, 

 calves newly-born have been found to be tubercular. Where did 

 they get the disease from ? With these facts before me, I am 

 inclined to think that the disease is spread as much by hereditary 

 tendency as by either inhalation or ingestion. 



545. Seeing that the disease is so very rife, particularly in aged 



dairy cows — in fact, the extent to which it is found in them is very 



appalling — it should be scheduled under a special Tuberculosis Act, 



or under a separate form or order of the Contagious Diseases 



(Animals) Act. The Government should, in dealing with such 



cattle, have a special form for destroying them, and compensate the 



farmer, butcher, or other parties financially interested. If the 



disease is so frightfully spread by the use of milk from tubercular 



cows as is generally thought, Government should then have all dairy 



cattle subjected to the action of the tuberculin test (the tuberculin 



being prepared under Government supervision and sold under 



registration), and those animals showing a rise of temperature 



should be separated from the others and destroyed, compensation 



being given according to circumstances ; for if the malady can be 



communicated to the human subject by eating the flesh or drinking 



the milk of a diseased animal, then the sooner it is destroyed the 



better. Under no consideration should it be fed up and slaughtered 



for human food, as is generally done. I have tried the tuberculin 



test largely, both with healthy and diseased subjects, and find it 



generally to be a fairly reliable diagnostic agent ; and on numerous 



occasions I have found that hypodermic injections of tuberculin 



arrests the progress of the malady even when the animals are in an 



advanced stage of the disease ; and within a fortnight after the test 



has been applied, as a rule, the majority of cases commence to do 



well. If diarrhoea has been present, it is checked, and the animal 



feeds, chews the cud, and soon begins to put on flesh. This ought 



not to be allowed, and immediately a case is found by the veterinary 



attendant to show unmistakable clinical signs of the malady, it 



should be reported and destroyed. I have also made numerous 



post-mortems on rabbits and poultry, and found them very much 



affected with tubercular deposits in the lungs, liver, and mesentery. 



