Ko. 4.] CATTLE COMMISSIONERS' REPORT. 583 



proportion of cases of tuberculosis picked out by tuberculin, 

 and showing no physical evidence of disease, are incipient 

 cases, and may not be a source of danger. Often a careful 

 examination has to be made before any pathological lesion 

 can be detected on post-mortem examination. It is a curious 

 fact that in a majority of cases where the reaction is high 

 and well marked only slight tubercuhir lesions are found, 

 while in such cases as are well advanced there is frequently 

 no apparently characteristic reaction from tuberculin, and 

 the examiner has to depend upon a physical examination 

 alone to detect the disease. It is in these latter cases that 

 the greater danger lies. If, then, care is taken to condemn 

 all such cases, and the milk supply is obtained only from 

 such animals as are in good general health and show no 

 physical evidence of disease, the danger is very much 

 reduced. 



In taking this view of the matter, the Board does not wish 

 to be understood as meaning that no further advance can be 

 made in this direction ; but, realizing that pulmonary con- 

 sumption in the human family has steadily and uniformly 

 decreased during the past forty-five years, the maximum 

 and minimum death rates being 42.7 per ten thousand of the 

 population in 1853, and 22.7 in X893, it believes that there 

 is no need for the adoption of more radical methods at the 

 present time ; and, further, it believes that advances can be 

 made in other directions which will give better protection to 

 the public, and result in great and immediate benefit to both 

 producer and consumer. 



Tuberculosis is not by any means the only danger to 

 which the consumer is exposed through the use of impure 

 milk. For years past the most fatal disease among infants 

 has l^een milk diarrhoea, or cholera infantum. In this con- 

 nection it has been claimed by certain parties that cholera 

 infantum or milk diarrhoea is a disease of tubercular origin. 

 This is a fallacy, and is misleading. Cholera infantum, as it 

 is usually understood, refers to milk diarrhoea, or, more 

 properly, acute mycotic diarrhoea of bacterial origin. Milk 

 diarrhoea is not an inflammatory disease ; there is little or no 

 time for pathological changes to take place, and few patho- 

 looical chauoes are observed after death. It is an acute 



