332 
E. F. BRUSH. 
ary consumption from the natives of a country in order to 
demonstrate the beneficial influence of its climate upon those 
so affected from other countries. It would be difficult to find 
such a place, . . . but Algiers, at all events, approximates 
such a condition.” 
There are many other countries furnishing statistics of 
death-rate from phthisis where the disease is not indigenous 
but due to importation. I think this can be said of Greece. 
According to Roser * * * § and Olympios, the disease is very rare 
in that country, and Edmond About, in his book on “ Greece 
and the Grecians,” tells us that “ the town of Athens possesses 
only five or six cows; no other milk is drank than that of the 
sheep ; their butter alone is eaten. They eat meat but once a 
year. The entire population eats meat at Easter for the whole 
year,”t and this meat is lamb.J 
In studying the relations existing between the human and 
the bovine races I find that religion plays a prominent part. 
Thus, in India, with the Mohammedan, Brahmin and Buddhist 
religions, but where, as a rule, dairy cattle have not been 
domesticated, there was undoubtedly an absence of phthisis 
before the English occupation. Hence, to-day we find all 
statements regarding the presence of tuberculosis uncertain. 
Thus Hirsch§ says : “ So also in India the prevalence of phthi¬ 
sis cannot be given in figures. It is, on the whole, rarer in 
that part of the world than in the temperate zone of the East¬ 
ern Hemisphere, but by no means so rare as the eailiei ob¬ 
servers supposed from their imperfect means of diagnosis.” 
Now, here is that expression of the feeling of doubt and un¬ 
certainty which we find in many works relating to this elusive 
disease. A man of scientific ability goes to a country and finds 
no phthisis among the inhabitants. After some years under 
circumstances that change the habits of the people, he begins 
to find phthisis, and therefore imagines that he was\mistaken 
* Roser, “ Ueber einige Krankheit, des Orieats,” p. 79. Olympics, “Cor- 
resp. bayerischer Aerzte,” p. 181. 
t Edmond About, “ Greece and the Grecians,” p. 33. 
1 Ibid., p 102. 
§ Hirsch, op. cit. vol. iii. p. 185. 
