BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS. 
407 
public, and if the mothers of children knew or realized the 
certain danger they are incurring by feeding cows’ milk to 
their children, they would demand that the authorities take 
immediate action. No person claims that all cases of human 
tuberculosis come from cattle or their products, but it is a 
settled fact that tuberculous meat and milk will cause the 
disease, and hence it is a question that comes under the head 
of preventive medicine as a general cause of disease in mankind, 
* 
and one cause that can be controlled. 
It is a great error to imagine that the disease is confined to 
thoroughbred or high-bred cattle. The disease is to a great 
extent spread from breeding farms, and, undoubtedly, the 
thoroughbred cow introduced the disease, but one cow as well 
as another may contract it from an affected cow, and all that is 
necessary to spread it is to introduce an affected cow into 
a stable where there are other cattle, and the disease will 
spread alike to the high-bred, low-bred, old-field cow and 
Tuberculosis does not confine itself to breeds or families, 
scrub. 
but the milch-cow is far more susceptible than any other kind 
of cattle. The breeding-farm is generally a hot-bed of the 
disease, and the State authorities should take hold of this part 
of the question at once. All cattle on such farms should 
be tested, and the affected should be quarantined. Many a 
dairyman having previously a healthy herd has his whole 
herd affected by the introduction of a single cow from one of 
the breeding farms. The public should be protected against 
infected milk from the dairies, and the dairyman should have 
protection against infection from the breeding farms. 
Bovine tuberculosis is spread by contagion ; it is the rarest 
thing imaginable for a calf to be born with tuberculosis ; slaugh¬ 
ter-house statistics prove the absolute correctness of this assertion. 
There can be no doubt that human tuberculosis is spread the 
same as bovine tnbercnlosis, and that heredity plays but a small 
part in the propagation of the disease, but it will be some time 
before the majority of physicians will believe it. If physicians 
