THE BOARD OF HEALTH AND TUBERCULOSIS. 
831 
of health. These organizations are designed to protect the 
public health, and, like all other human organizations, they are 
liable to errors of judgment. Their errors are legitimate sub¬ 
jects of criticism, while their general usefulness to the public 
should be commended. 
It has been stated that u consumption ” follows the cow. 
This is true of the people who also suffer from the evils of 
civilization. In this disease, the relation of human tuberculosis 
to the cow, and of animal tuberculosis to man is, doubtless, a 
source of mutual infection. Though we do not know as a his¬ 
torical fact whether tuberculosis was at first transmitted to man 
from the cow, or to the cow from man, yet we do know that 
these transmissions of disease are mutual in both ways. But in 
consequence of the fact that tuberculous cows yield a large pro¬ 
duct of infectious milk and meat, the human consumers of these 
products suffer infinitely more from animal infection than the 
bovine race can from human infection. Besides, the infection 
from man to man in all possible ways of this fearful’ scourge is 
sadly prolific. If tuberculosis destroys one-fourth of the adult 
population of the United States, boards of sanitation should re- 
ceive every possible aid from the public to curtail its ravages. 
Though heredity, if at all, may be a source of the spread of con¬ 
sumption directly, yet it is a source rife in the transmission of 
debilitated constitutions which cannot resist tuberculous infec¬ 
tion. Hence the widespread tendency susceptible to infection. 
It is in this direction that the boards of health fail to prevent 
the spread of animal tuberculosis. Public sentiment, as yet, 
will not tolerate the regulations of marital hygiene. But in the 
breeding of domestic animals, sound health, when legally de¬ 
manded, will largely prevent the transmission of feeble constitu¬ 
tions that readily yield to infectious diseases. In France, 
diseased or feeble stallions are not permitted to procreate and 
transmit evil constitutions and diseases. 
In 1890, I visited Europe, and wrote a series of ten letters 
for the New York Tribune , in one of which, after a careful and 
extensive study of the Cotentin breed of cattle of Normandy, I 
