40 Professor Sims Woodhead, The Relationship between 



The Relationship between Human and Bovine Tuberculosis. 

 By G. Sims Woodhead. Professor of Pathology. 



[Bead 23 November 1908.] 



Before the infective nature of tuberculosis had been demon- 

 strated by modern methods there was considerable difference of 

 opinion as to the specificity of the tuberculosis occurring in 

 animals and in human subjects. Koch in his earlier observations 

 seems to have had little doubt as to the identity of the tubercle 

 bacillus in all forms of tuberculosis, though Klein at a very early 

 date held that the bovine tubercle bacillus differed somewhat from 

 that found in the human subject not only in its manner of growth 

 and in its relation to the tissues but also in virulence. Theobald 

 Smith, Dinwiddie and others as the result of a series of very 

 careful observations called attention to what they believed were 

 almost specific differences as regards size, mode of growth, virulence 

 and chemical products, between the human and the bovine types 

 of tubercle bacilli. During the time that I held the Grocers' 

 Company Scholarship I was led to make a careful examination of 

 the tuberculous material that fell into my hands with the view 

 of obtaining some light on the subject of caseation in tubercle 

 and of the relations of the various elements found in tubercle to 

 the spread of the disease not only amongst human beings but 

 amongst cattle. I was very early struck by the large proportion 

 of cases of abdominal tuberculosis {tabes mesenterica) met with 

 in extremely young children and after comparing my own observa- 

 tions with those already made by Bang, Rilliet, and Barthez I was 

 convinced that, in children at any rate, many of the cases of 

 tuberculosis were the result of a kind of natural infection through 

 the intestine. I found that in 127 cases of tuberculosis in 

 children on whom I had the opportunity of making a post-mortem 

 examination tubercular ulceration of the intestine was found in 

 forty-three. Only one of these cases had succumbed during the 

 first year after birth, but 14 died within two years and a half of 

 birth, 10 between three and five years, 7 from six to seven and a 

 half years, 5 from eight to ten years, and 6 between eleven and fifteen 

 years. Although there was tuberculous ulceration in forty-three 

 cases only, there was distinct tuberculous degeneration of the 

 mesenteric glands in no fewer than 100 cases or nearly 79°/^ of 



