MILK-BORNE DISEASES 127 



lastingly indebted for the discovery of the hacillus 

 tuberculosis. To the splendid fame of Koch the 

 theory doubtless owes much of the vogue it has en- 

 joyed for a brief period, until completely discredited 

 by numerous conclusive researches and experiments. 



Prior to 1896 the transmissibility of the disease 

 from man to the lower animals and from the lower 

 animals to man was generally accepted as a fact. The 

 Wise Preacher of the Bible had observed many centu- 

 ries ago that, in their pain at least, man and beast are 

 closely related: "For that which befalleth sons of 

 men befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them : 

 As the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all 

 one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above 

 a beast." * Villemin, the French physician who, in 

 1865, inoculated various animals with tuberculous 

 matter from human beings, was led by his exper- 

 iments to echo, in the name of science, what the 

 Preacher had proclaimed many generations before 

 and to say: "Man shares with cattle the sad privilege 

 of perpetuating tuberculosis." ** 



In 1896 Dr. Theobald Smith, of the Bureau of 

 Animal Industry at Washington, called attention to 

 the fact that the human and bovine varieties of the 

 tubercle bacillus have certain very marked character- 

 istics by which they are easily differentiated." The 

 discovery attracted a good deal of attention at the 

 * Ecclesiastes. 



