102 THE COW 



we usually buried her next day. It is true that 

 much could be done by preventative measures. It 

 was known that milk fever usually attacked cows 

 that were well fed and fleshy, the precise condition 

 in which intelligent dairymen try to have their cat- 

 tle at freshing. We were advised to give her only a 

 restricted diet for two weeks before calving, but 

 to maintain a cow in this manner is totally opposed 

 to all sound tenets of good dairy management. 

 Due to the great discovery of veterinarians we may 

 now feed her well, and when the first premonitory 

 symptoms are noticed the udder is pumped full of 

 sterilized and filtered air until it is tense and drum- 

 like and almost invariably within a few hours she 

 will bie apparently as well as ever. 



Bovine tuberculosis is by far the most talked- 

 about of all cattle diseases, owing to the fact that 

 many well-informed sanitarians believe that it may 

 be transmitted to the human race as well. The oc- 

 currence of tuberculosis in cattle has been recog- 

 nized for many years, but so long as we were de- 

 pendent on physical examination for its detection, 

 no real progress toward eradication or control 

 was possible. The discovery of tuberculin and its 

 application in various forms to the tuberculin test 

 has given a simple, inexpensive and on the whole 

 remarkably accurate diagnostic agent which per- 

 mits the detection, not only of advanced but of in- 

 cipient cases as well. If bovine tuberculosis were 

 confined entirely to the lower animals, it would not 



