JOHN M. PARKER. 
I90 
was sold without let or hindrance ; at that time some steps were 
necessary for the protection of public health, and in consequence 
of the demand for protection, local inspectors were appointed, 
whose duty it was to seize all evidently deceased animals, as well 
as unwholesome meat. That was a step in the right direction 
so far as it went. 
In 1890 Koch, under pressure, made public his work on tu¬ 
berculin. This resulted in a tremendous and intense excitement 
all over the world, and consumptives undertook journeys of 
hundreds of miles for the sake of getting treated with the “ new 
cure for consumption.” It was found, however, that although it 
cured a percentage of cases, yet in some it caused the disease 
to spread through the system, establishing new centers of infec¬ 
tion in the body. For this reason its use as a curative agent 
was discontinued. It had been noticed by several observers, 
however, that when a person suffering from consumption re¬ 
ceived an injection of the lympth or tuberculin, it invariably 
caused a rise in temperature, and in 1891 Gutman, a Russian, 
took advantage of this fact and began to make experiments with 
it as a diagnostic agent in cattle, and as a result of the wide noto¬ 
riety and intense interest its production and use aroused in med¬ 
ical and scientific circles, original workers began hammering and 
working at this subject in all possible directions. An immense 
amount of valuable and good work has been done, but unfortu¬ 
nately through newspaper notoriety a morbid interest and ex¬ 
citement has been aroused among the general public, and the 
present crusade against dairy cattle is the result. 
Some of the best experimental work that has been done with 
milk is the work done by the Massachusetts Society for the 
Promotion of Agriculture at Matapan, under the direction of 
Dr. H. Ernst, and in looking over this work one cannot help 
noticing that while there is abundant evidence to show that dis¬ 
ease may be conveyed by the ingestion or inoculation of milk from 
diseased animals, yet the danger must be very slight in actual 
and under natural condition. 
In the work on “Infectiousness of Milk” published recently 
