APPENDIX. 157 



to suppress this terrible scourge. If it could be shown that as a 

 state we were entirely free from obvine tuberculosis and sufficient 

 means were being used to preserve that freedom, it would create 

 such a demand for our dairy stock as would compensate us for all 

 the expense involved and we would not be subject in any such 

 measure to the continual losses that we now have to meet from 

 this cause. If any of our breeders have an ambition to improve 

 their stock and go out to purchase animals to this end, they stand 

 about an even chance of ruining their herd and business by 

 introducing tuberculosis with the improved blood. Many instances 

 of this sort might be mentioned as having occurred in this State, 

 and it is safe to say many more will occur unless measures are 

 taken to prevent it. Many of our most progressive dairymen and 

 stock breeders have run against this snag in their business, and 

 have either been obliged to dispose of their stock at a loss to them- 

 selves or to those who purchased it, or to continue breeding from 

 diseased stock — a course which deserves to be condemned from 

 every standpoint of policy and safety. 



One tuberculous cow introduced into a large dairy herd has 

 often been the means of contaminating most of the herd, and one 

 diseased herd of choice animals where the calves are raised and 

 sold has often been the means of introducing tuberculosis into 

 many herds, to the material loss of the owners. A much more 

 serious reason than the purely financial one why every effort should 

 be made to suppress bovine tuberculosis is the close relation it 

 bears to the same disease in human beiags. 



Every tuberculous cow is a menace not only to the health of 

 other cattle, but to the lives of human beings. Bovine tubercu- 

 losis is not perhaps the greatest factor in causing human tuber- 

 culosis, but it is an important factor. It is possible to demon- 

 strate beyond a reasonable doubt that thousands of children and 

 adults die each year as a direct result of bovine tuberculosis. 

 Tuberculosis of cattle and human beings is the same disease, due 

 to the same cause, bacillus tuberculosis. This bacillus thrown off 

 from the lungs of consumptives, coughed out b}^ tuberculous 

 cattle, in the milk of consumptive mothers, or in the milk or flesh 

 of diseased cattle, has the same power to set up disease in sus- 

 ceptible animals without regard to its source. When we consider 

 that during the one year of 1892 in this State alone, 1,513* human 

 beings died from pulmonary and other forms of tuberculosis and 



