Tuberculosis. 
20 
calf  in  ten  thousand  was  tuberculous  at  birth,  in  places  where 
not  less  than  5 per  cent,  of  the  adult  cattle  were  more  or  less 
seriously  diseased.  These  earlier  figures  are  now  known  to 
have  been  untrustworthy,  because  at  that  time  the  search 
made  for  tuberculous  lesions  in  slaughter-houses  was  not  very 
minute  or  painstaking  ; but,  nevertheless,  they  made  it  wholly 
impossible  to  believe  that  the  proportion  of  calves  born 
tuberculous  was  anything  like  as  large  as  it  ought  to  have 
been,  on  the  assumption  that  tuberculous  parents  generally 
handed  on  the  disease  to  their  progeny  before  the  latter  were 
born. 
The  introduction  of  more  skilled  inspection  in  the  German 
abattoirs,  and  in  particular  the  custom  of  paying  minute 
attention  to  the  condition  of  the  principal  lymphatic  glands 
of  the  body,  soon  caused  a notable  rise  in  the  proportion 
of  cases  of  tuberculosis  detected  both  in  old  animals  and  in 
young,  and  furnished  figures  that  may  be  accepted  as  approxi- 
mately accurate.  As  an  example  one  may  take,  almost  at 
random,  the  statistics  published  regarding  the  results  of 
slaughter-house  inspection  in  the  kingdom  of  Saxony  in  the 
year  1895. 1 Out  of  89,493  cows  slaughtered  during  that  year, 
12,832,  or  32'49  per  cent.,  were  tuberculous.  The  number  of 
bulls  slaughtered  during  the  year  was  18,149,  and  of  these, 
3,811,  or  20'99  per  cent.,  were  tuberculous.  The  number  of 
calves  slaughtered  during  the  year  was  201,643,  of  which 
number  only  503,  or  -24  per  cent.,  were  found  to  be  tuber- 
culous. 
An  objection  that  might  be  taken  to  these  statistics  is 
that  probably  some  tuberculous  calves  die  or  are  killed  in 
consequence  of  their  weakly  condition  within  a short-  time 
after  birth,  and  as  such  cases  do  not  find  their  way  into 
slaughter-houses,  and  consequently  escape  inspection,  the 
observations  made  in  the  public  abattoirs  give  a lower  per- 
centage of  tuberculosis  among  calves  than  the  actual  one. 
This  may  be  admitted,  but  it  cannot  be  conceded  that  the 
number  of  cases  of  congenital  tuberculosis  that  thus  escape 
detection  is  sufficiently  large  to  introduce  any  important  error 
into  the  published  statistics,  such  as  those  just  quoted.  There 
are.  however,  available  statistics  collected  in  circumstances 
that  to  a large  extent  enable  one  to  discount  this  possible 
source  of  error.  Thus  at  Kiel,2  during  the  period  1895  to 
1898,  21,858  calves  under  a week  old  were  slaughtered,  and 
of  these  only  138,  or  '63  per  cent.,  were  tuberculous.  At 
Flensburg,  from  1899  to  1906,  24,822  calves  were  slaughtered, 
1 Bericht  iiber  das  Veterinarwesen  im  Konigreic/i  Sachsen  fur  das  Jahr 
1895. 
2 Quoted  by  Klein,  Berliner  Tier  dr  zt.  Wochenschrift,  Yol.  XXVI.,  page  205. 
