HUMAN A1ND BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS. 
335 
over night, and this was the only spot in South America 
where we found milk to our stomachs’ content.” 
Without going into further details respecting separate 
communities, let us consider the statistics of Europe, and 
theie we find that the prevalence of phthisis is regulated by 
the ratio of the bovine to the human race. Thus, in Ireland, 
where the cattle number 4,570,000, nearly an equal propor¬ 
tion to that of the inhabitants, according to Dr. Wylde, 
phthisis is by fai the most fatal affection to which the inhabi¬ 
tants of that country are subject. Denmark, with about the 
same ratio of cattle to inhabitants, sustains about the same 
late from consumption. In Portugal, where there are six in¬ 
habitants to one bovine animal, consumption attracts so little 
attention that few notices can be found relating to the disease 
in that country. In Italy, the distribution of cattle being one 
to six inhabitants, the mortality from phthisis varies greatly 
in different parts of the country, reaching the exceedingly 
low rate of 0.86 in a thousand in the Basilicata. In Egypt, 
where the ratio is one animal to nearly thirty inhabitants, 
Piunei tells us ‘‘that the disease becomes less in exact pro¬ 
portion as we proceed southward from the shore of the Med¬ 
iterranean. In Central and Upper Egypt it is decidedly 
uncommon.”* 
Thus the statistics go on, and where the exceptions arise, 
the cause is always evident in the conditions that influence the 
breeds of cattle. Taking into consideration all the foregoing 
facts, theie can be little doubt that the inbred species of the 
bovine race is the prime etiological factor of phthisis in the 
human lace. They not only nurse the germ and prevent its 
extinction, but sow it in the human race continually and abun¬ 
dantly ; without their aid the germ would die, for of all the 
germs known none have so hard a struggle for existence in 
the human kind as the bacillus of tubercle, when we consider 
the comparatively few of the human race who are afflicted, 
and the immense number who are exposed to the infection 
and escape it. 
* Hirsch, p. 192. 
