48 THE FARM DOCTOR. 



that tubercle is communicable to healthy animals by inocula- 

 tion, or by eating the raw, diseased product, and that it is 

 superinduced in any predisposed individual by setting up a 

 local inflammation. It has also been transmitted by the warm, 

 fresh milk, but probably only when the disease has invaded 

 the mammary glands ; in many experiments, including those 

 conducted by the author, the milk has proved harmless. 

 Close, badly-aired buildings (as town cow-sheds) are among 

 the most prolific causes of the disease, as are also changes to 

 a colder climate, to a cold, exposed locality, or from a dry to a 

 low, damp, undrained region. Finally, any cause which tends 

 to wear out the general health tends to tuberculosis in a pre- 

 disposed subject. 



Tubercles may be developed in any part of the body, as the 

 lungs, their serous covering, the membrane supporting the 

 bowels, the coats of the intestines, the throat, the spleen, the 

 liver, the pancreas, the ovaries, the kidneys, the bones, especi- 

 ally the ends of long bones, and, in rare cases, the muscles and 

 connective tissue. 



Symptoms vary according to the seat of the deposit, yet there 

 is a constitutional condition common to all, and the lungs are 

 almost always involved in the later stages, giving rise to a great 

 similarity of symptoms. The disease may be acute but is 

 usually chronic The onset is insidious and easily overlooked, 

 tubercles being often found in animals killed in prime condition, 

 and I have seen them in parturition fever, which is always 

 attributed to plethora. There is some dullness, loss of vivacity, 

 tenderness of the withers, back, and loins, and of the walls of 

 the chest, occasional dryness of the nose, heat of the horns 

 and ears, want of pliancy in the skin, slightly increased tem- 

 perature (102°), weak, accelerated pulse, mawkish breath, stiff- 

 ness of the limbs, wandering perhaps from one to another, 

 slight, infrequent, dry cough, and blue, watery milk, often 

 abundant but with cheesy matter, fat and sugar decreased, and 



