NOTES ON TUBERCULOSIS. 
Our own State should not be the last to legislate on the sub¬ 
ject of this loathsome disease. Our next legislature should, in 
some way, be made to see the importance of stamping out the 
disease, and induced to properly organize the State Board of 
Health and give them power and money to act in the matter. 
To procure the necessary laws will require the combined efforts 
of our society with the medical society of this State, as well as 
our own individual efforts. It is also necessary that the breed¬ 
ers of the State should join us in our efforts. 
As I have stated in a previous article, all dairy and breeding 
herds should be put through the tuberculin test. It is also ad- 
vfsable to make the tests as far as possible on all private herds, 
and the diseased cattle, wherever found, destroyed. Such 
animals, of course, must be paid for by the State. If the 
owners, however, could be made to look at the matter in the 
proper light, they would see that it would, in the end, be much 
more profitable to destroy all diseased animals at once, even 
though they received nothing for them. By keeping one dis¬ 
eased animal in the herd, the disease is constantly being com¬ 
municated to the other animals, until finally the whole herd 
may become affected. Besides the danger of communicating 
the disease to himself and family would at once be avoided, by 
the destruction of the diseased animal or animals. It may be 
argued that the State cannot afford to pay for these diseased 
cattle. If the State has not now got the money at hand to 
carry out the work, a slight increase of taxes would readily sup¬ 
ply the funds, and no one would or ought to object to having his 
tax only slightly increased if he knew that it was for the pur¬ 
pose of making his herds more valuable and almost entirely 
cutting off his chance to become a victim to tuberculosis. It 
would seem, however, that extra taxation is entirely unneces¬ 
sary, for the amount required for the work would grow less after 
the first year or two. 
The following figures show the approximate cost of exter¬ 
minating the disease: In 1892 the estimated number of cattle 
in Virginia was 406,137. Supposing the number has remained 
