822 
PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 
careful, patient physical examination by capable veterinary officers 
will be brought to bear in the inspections. The trial will extend over 
five years ; and if during or at the end of that time sufficient success 
attends it as to warrant its continuance, further funds will be devoted 
to a rigorous and close system of control and inspection of all cattle 
in the country, and slaughter of diseased ones. Whatever may be the 
result (personally I am of opinion the attempt will fail), the Danish 
authorities are to be heartily commended for their enterprise, and 
statistics and information of great value to other countries will be 
forthcoming, so that the progress of the trial will he watched with 
intense interest by animal pathologists on all sides. 
I think, however, that the first concern of pathologists is 
to discover the extent to which the infection of man occurs 
from animals. So far as infection by cow’s milk is concerned, 
I think this could be done comparatively easily and without much 
expense. I would suggest, in the first place, that all dairy farms or 
milk -producing places on the one hand, and all milk-shops or milk- 
selling places on the other, should be licensed or registered, and a 
license fee paid. Before a license is granted to any dairyman his 
herd should be carefully examined by a veterinary inspector, and all 
healthy cattle branded with some distinctive mark on the hoof or 
horn, and only the milk of such cattle should be allowed to pass into 
consumption. The veterinary inspection should be repeated at short 
intervals— a month, say— and all diseased or doubtful animals 
destroyed or removed from the dairy herd. No fresh cows should be 
used for dairy purposes until after inspection. A complete record 
should be kept by the veterinary inspector of all pronounced and 
suspected cases of disease, and of all isolations and slaughterings. 
Then, if a record were kept of the milk-shops to which the milk of 
any given dairy was supplied, and at which it was retailed, it would 
be a comparatively easy matter for any medical man to trace the milk 
supply in any case of infantile tuberculosis. Having ascertained the 
milk-shop from which the family was supplied, be could, by referring 
to the veterinary inspector’s records, form a fairly reliable estimate 
whether the source of infection had been the milk supply. 
Such a plan could be tried at first in a limited area in each 
colony — in the metropolis and its suburbs. By its operation for a 
year or two, if medical men in practice took advantage of it and 
recorded their deductions, we should be enabled to more correctly and 
practically gauge the danger which exists, and the prevalence of the 
disease in bovines, than can possibly be done at present. And on the 
experience so gained we should be able to suggest reforms in the 
control of the milk supply which would he better calculated to 
practically deal with the trouble than any that could he suggested 
now, based as they would be on reliable data. I think that when such 
data are procured they will amply and eloquently prove that the 
estimate of the degree of danger that, in this paper, I have stated 
I believe to now exist, is not exaggerated; that* in fact, it is, if 
anything, below the mark. It will then remain for the public to 
insist on a remedy or attempted remedial measures, and it will then 
be gross negligence on the part of those whose concern it is to 
conserve public health if they are in the least laggardly in their efforts 
to bring about the necessary reform. 
