1903.] RAVENEL—WARFARE AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS. 215 
such farms patients who are well enough to be discharged from the 
sanatoria can find light employment under good conditions until 
strong enough to return to their usual avocations in factories, etc., 
without danger of relapse. 
I have not tried to outline an ideal method of dealing with tuber- 
culosis, and much could be added to what has been said, but have 
limited myself to what appears to me imperatively demanded by 
the conditions which confront us, and to what is entirely in our 
power to effect. The affair is, however, beyond private charity, 
and governmental aid is necessary, each State doing its share. 
In spite of the enormous expenditure which would be involved 
in providing hospital accommodations for the indigent tuberculous, 
it would cost less than the present money loss to the country from 
deaths alone, estimated, as said before, at $330,000,000 annually ; 
and in a few years we could confidently expect a marked and pro- 
gressive decrease in outlay. It must be borne in mind that the 
demonstration of the communicability of tuberculosis has resulted 
in special hardships to the poor consumptive, since most general 
hospitals now close their doors to these afflicted ones. The poor 
consumptive reaps but little aid from the vast donations from public 
and private sources to general hospitals ; hence the urgent necessity 
for special provision for them, both on the score of humanity as 
well as protection to the public health. 
Hand in hand with such measures should go efforts directed to 
the eradication of tuberculosis from cattle, since we must look on 
cattle as the source from which a certain amount of human tubercu- 
losis springs, chiefly in children. 
Without entering into matters of controversy, the following proven 
facts may be stated as grounds for this belief: 
(1) The tubercle bacillus as found in bovine animals differs from 
that found in man chiefly in its greater virulence for practically all 
experimental animals, including man’s nearest relative, the monkey. 
It would be an anomaly if man, one of the most susceptible of all 
animals to tuberculosis, were immune to the most powerful type of 
the germ of tuberculosis known to us. 
(2) There are numerous well-authenticated cases of accidental 
inoculation of man by the bovine tubercle bacillus, with the pro- 
duction of typical disease at the point of inoculation. Some of 
these cases have been followed by general tuberculosis, ending in 
death, attributable with good reason to the inoculation. 
PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XLII. 173. 0. PRINTED Aue. 7, 1908. 
