634 VETEEINAEY HYGIENE 



The mistake then committed could have been avoided had 

 veterinary opinion been sought ; but the inquiry was con- 

 ducted by medical men, who, necessarily, are no more 

 capable of investigating the diseases of animals than 

 veterinary men are of those affecting man. 



When an infectious disease common to animals and man 

 has to be investigated, both medical and veterinary forces 

 must be combined for the purpose, and since the error 

 alluded to above this has been done. When the combined 

 forces have attacked the problem, the results have been 

 satisfactory, of which the best example is tuberculosis. 



To state the case referred to above as briefly as 

 possible, it amounted to this, that an eruption on the 

 teats and udders of cows, which was almost certainly 

 cow-pox, was blamed for producing a condition of milk 

 which caused a widespread outbreak of scarlet fever in 

 London, and the dairyman was in consequence ruined. 

 The next attempt made was to connect diphtheria of man 

 with strangles of the horse. In both cases it is to be 

 feared the inquiry was not entirely free from, perhaps, 

 unconscious bias, as at that time there was a growing 

 feeling in the office of the Local Government Board, that 

 wherever human agency could not be traced in the trans- 

 mission of disease, the cause was due to some animal 

 affection of which the veterinary profession, in at least one 

 case, had failed to take cognisance. 



Nearly twenty years have since elapsed, and nothing has 

 been added to our knowledge of the subject to in the least 

 justify the position taken up by the medical investigators ; 

 while the attitude adopted by the veterinary profession at 

 the time, and consistently maintained to date, is that there 

 is no disease of animals capable of giving scarlet fever or 

 diphtheria to man. 



Prejudice dies very hard. Two standard works on Human 

 Hygiene include ' some ailment of the cow ' as the cause in 

 man of scarlet fever, diphtheria, and probably enteric 

 fever, while tetanus, it is hinted, has probably an equine 

 origin ! 



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