i88o.] Tuberculosis transmissible through Meat and Milk . 441 
V. TUBERCULOSIS TRANSMISSIBLE THROUGH 
THE MEAT AND MILK OF THE ANIMALS 
AFFECTED WITH IT, 
WHEN CONSUMED BY YOUNG CHILDREN. 
LL} HE following Memoir, read before the Farmers’ Club 
Tub of the American Institute, by the President, A. S. 
Heath, M.D., has been courteously forwarded to us 
at the author’s request : — 
In 1865 Villemin proved, by repeated experiments, that it 
was possible to produce consumption in previously healthy 
animals. He found that finely-divided tuberculous matter, 
when introduced under the skin of rabbits and guinea-pigs, 
produced tubercles in three weeks in their lungs ; thus 
proving from these experiments that tuberculosis should be 
classed as a specific infective disease, capable of being con- 
veyed by inoculation, like small-pox or syphilis. Numerous 
pathologists have verified Villemin’s experiment. It was 
also found, by Dr. Wilson Fox and Dr. Sanderson, that 
pneumonic matter, pus, putrid matter, &c., would produce 
disease in healthy animals, and transmit it through their 
meat and milk, to dogs, cats, hogs, and through milk to 
young children and animals to whom it had been fed. 
Cows living under bad hygienic conditions, as in man, 
under similar conditions predispose to tuberculosis in them- 
selves, and render their milk poisonous to children. In New 
York city most of the cows are diseased from this cause, and 
by being fed on unsound food. 
In a future paper I shall pay my special respedts to city 
cows and cow stables , and show, I trust, that the milk from 
diseased cows poisons thousands of city children, who are 
supposed to die from cholera infantum , when, in fadt, they 
die from tubercles of the intestines, resulting in wasting 
diarrhoea. Consumption is infinitely more common in city- 
kept cows than it is believed to be, even by physicians. I 
recently called Prof. Chandler’s attention to the unusual 
number of cows crowded into city stables; and from his 
taking copies of notes sent to me by Dr. James D. Hopkins, 
I feel assured that so efficient a sanitarian as he is will have 
these nuisances abated, and promptly too. 
