Tuberculosis. 51.5 



In Northern Sweden, Norway, I^apland and Finland, where 

 cattle are scarce and reindeer plentiful, tuberculosis is said to be 

 rare, though the inhabitants live in the closest of dwellings 

 through the long winter. In most of the Pacific islands there are 

 no cattie, and the natives are comparatively free from, consump- 

 tion. In Hawaii, since the introduction of cattle, consumption 

 has increased. Australia and Tasmania, which forty years ago 

 were the great resorts for English consumptives, have become in- 

 creasingly the hpmes -of infection since the development of the 

 cattle industry and the influx of phthisical subjects. Minnesota 

 and Dakota, in the early days, were held to be incompatible with 

 tuberculosis, but since the advent of the white man. and his 

 stabled herds they have largely lost their sanitary reputation. 

 The highest known mortality from tuberculosis to-day is that of 

 the reservation Indians of these States, who feed on raw, diseased 

 beef. In. the Kirghiz steppes the Tartars subsist on the flesh and 

 milk of : their solipeds, and largely escape consumption. In 

 Japan, Dr. Ashmead tells us that the common people escape 

 tuberculosis, while the aristocracy suffer seyerelj'. He attributes 

 this mainly to the debauchery of the ruling class ; but it must not 

 be overlooked that they eat freely of beef and dairy products, 

 which the rice-eating poorer population do not. The same re- 

 marks apply in measure to the mandarin and plebeian classes in 

 China. Holden tells us that tuberculosis is rare in Columbia, 

 Ecuador and on the eastern slopes of the Andes, where little or 

 no milk or butter is used. It must be further borne in niind that 

 in these countries all herds live in the open air, and practically 

 escape infection. 



These examples must be contrasted with the consumers of beef 

 and milk in civilized temperate countries, where the stock are 

 largely kept in-doors. A general average mortality of 7 or 8 per 

 cent, from tuberculosis, and the/^.f^ mortem evidence in European 

 and American hospitals of 33 to 50 per cent, which show tuber- 

 cular lesions, recent or remote, cannot be lightly passed over. 

 The contrast with our reservation Indians is still more striking. 

 Holden and Treon testify that the meat furnished to the Indians 

 is always poor and often diseased, and that when the stock arrives 

 our hungry wards devour the internal organs raw, or, later, the 

 flesh as pounded preserved meat, and still uncooked. The deaths 



