390 Tuberculosis 



observed before the experiments could be accepted. At the 

 close of the congress the matter remained unsettled, Koch 

 appearing to have the best of the argument. 



Prophylaxis. The prevention of tuberculosis in cattle is 

 a matter of vast sanitary importance. Not only have we 

 to consider the danger of infection from milk containing 

 tubercle bacilli, but also the inferior quality and diminished 

 usefulness of milk and flesh coming from animals that are 

 diseased. The extermination of bovine tuberculosis, there- 

 fore, becomes imperative, and the utmost efforts should be 

 made to bring it about. Several separate measures must 

 be considered: 



1. Improvement in the methods of diagnosis, by which 

 the recognition of the disease is made possible before its 

 ravages are great. This is rapidly coming about w r ith in- 

 creasing information regarding the use and abuse of tu- 

 berculin, etc. 



2. Means by which infected animals shall be destroyed. 

 Here the municipal and state governments furnish inade- 

 quate financial compensation to make possible the destruc- 

 tion of diseased cattle without adequate compensation an 

 injustice to the unfortunate owner. 



3. Means of preventing the infection of healthy ani- 

 mals. In many places this is being achieved with brilliant 

 success by separation of the herd, healthy and newly born 

 animals constituting one part, suspicious animals the other. 

 By these means valuable breeding animals can be kept for 

 a time, at least, in usefulness. A second and less successful 

 means of preventing infection is by means of prophylactic 

 vaccination of the healthy animals with dead cultures, 

 modified living cultures, or by bacteriotoxins made by com- 

 minuting them. 



Experiments of this kind have been conducted by 

 McFadyen,* on a large scale by von Behring,f by Pearson 

 and Gilliland,t Calmette and Guerin, and by Theobald 

 Smith, 1 1 all of whom think distinct resisting power against 

 infection by the tubercle bacillus can thus be brought about. 



* "Jour. Comp. Path, and Therap.," June, 1901. 



t "Beitrage zur experimentellen Therapie," 1902, Hft. 5. 



J "Jour, of Comp. Med. Vet. Archiv," Nov., 1902; "Univ. of Penna. 

 Med. Bull.," April, 1905. 



$ "Ann. de PInst. Pasteur," Oct., 1905, May, 1906, and July, 1907; 

 and "International Congress on Tuberculosis," Washington, 1908. 



|| "Journal of Medical Research," June, 1908, xvm, No. 3, p. 451. 



