152 SPECIAL CATTLE THERAPY 



Milk from the family cow and cream from tlie fam- 

 ily cow go to the members of the family as milk and 

 cream, undiluted with milk or cream from other cows 

 or with water. Therefore, the one tuberculous cow, 

 or several tuberculous cows, in a herd of dairy cows 

 are not nearly so dangerous to the ultimate consumer 

 as is the tuberculous family cow to the family using 

 its milk and cream directly and undiluted. 



My experience has been that, in every instance of 

 a family using the milk from a family cow with a 

 fairly well marked case of tuberculosis, which has 

 come to my attention, I have been able to satisfy myself 

 that one or more members of that family are already 

 tuberculous or are ''getting consumption." (And in 

 many cases it does not take very long before some 

 member of the family begins to show signs of the 

 disease. Sometimes a few months is enough time to 

 infect some members virulently.) 



For this reason I say incipient tuberculosis deserves 

 a separate chapter in our text books; it is in the in- 

 cipient stage it must be recognized to prevent the 

 harm it might do once it becomes fully developed. 

 Here I would say that the family cow which is more 

 or less regularly attacked by spells of ''off feed," by 

 mild, repeated attack of indigestion, especially, if at 

 the same time there are symptoms referable to the 

 mammary glands, is a good subject for the tuberculin 

 test. Usually, in the family cow, the reaction is either 

 clearly negative or typically positive. This is prob- 

 ably due to the fact that the surroundings and gen- 

 eral treatment accorded the family cow are more fa- 

 vorable to the ideal application of the test than is the 

 CRSo Vvdth cows in herds. 



Histories of the infection of families with tuber- 

 culosis through the medium of the milk from the fam- 



