ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 299 



DR. KOCH'S CONCLUSION. 



Dairymen of the state will be interested in a report before a medi- 

 cal congress in London, Eng., by Dr. Koch, the great German scientist, 

 and leading authority at the present time on tuberculosis. The doctor 

 asserts, after long experiments, that tuberculosis cannot be transmitted 

 from the cow to the human. A special cable on Dr. Koch's address be- 

 fore the medical congress is given in the Chicago Tribune of July 23, 

 1901, as follows: 



"Dr. Robert Koch's address on Tuesday at St. James' hall before the 

 Tuberculosis congress was extraordinary in many respects, but chiefly in 

 the hopeful view he took of the curative possibilities achieved by science. 

 In elaborating this idea he pointed out that, according to his experiments 

 and observation, the chief scoure of contagion was from the human spu- 

 tum. This was brought out when he made the declaration that the trans- 

 mission of tuberculosis through milk was inconsiderable, and that heredi- 

 ty had little to do with the spread of the disease. 



"The chief source of human tuberculosis, he said, was the diffusion 

 of sputum, and the natural preventive measures were to remove patients 

 from the small, overcrowded dwellings, the establishment of special hos- 

 pitals for them, the compulsory notification to the health authorities of 

 all cases of tubercular disease, a systematic disinfection of sick rooms, 

 and the founding of sanitariums where cures could be effected. 



"This hall was crowded with medical men, and there was a group 

 of scientific experts on the platform when Dr. Koch was introduced by 

 Lord Lister with the simplicity becoming such a great man of science. 

 He was welcomed with British heartiness. His address occupied about 

 eighty minutes, and was followed with intense interest. Dr. Koch read 

 it in English with deliberate and painstaking effort to repress the 

 marked German accent, but with no lack of emphasis when the contro- 

 versial passages were reached. He is a tall, full habited man with a high 

 forehead, large spectacles, and stooping shoulders — the embodiment of 

 German scholarship and thoroughness in scientific investigation. 



