254 
ALBERT BABB 
jects contains bacilli, consequently close, hot barns, basement 
stables or box-cars may prove an occasional channel of in¬ 
fection. 
Elaborate experiments have been conducted at many of 
the veterinary colleges across the water, and at the Munich 
Pathological Institute, showing positive results with various 
animals made to inhale atmosphere sprayed with distilled 
water, holding in solution sputum and the contents of tuber¬ 
cular cavities of lung tissue. 
Animals, especially cattle, may become infected by lick¬ 
ing one another, by drinking at a common watering place or 
by eating fodder previously polluted by the saliva of their 
kind. A cow may impart the germs to her newly dropped 
calf, in performing the first maternal duty of cleaning and 
drying it, or later in caressing it with her tongue about its 
mouth, nose or vulva, or in licking her own udder and teats. 
The feed is also a fruitful source of the disorder, and one 
of the commonest vehicles for the germ is milk. The youngs 
of all the domestic animals, as well as infants, are frequently 
fed on the milk of the cow, of all quadrupeds the one most 
subject to phthisis. Her own offspring usually relies on her 
for its early sustenance, and pigs, dogs, cats and chickens 
often gain access to uncooked milk in one form or another. 
The mammary gland of a phthisical bovine secretes the 
bacilli, and they pass off in the lacteal fluid even when there 
is no local tuberculosis present and no signs of mastitis in an;y 
form. But when the case is well advanced and gelatinous 
degeneration of the udder thoroughly established, then is 
her milk particularly dangerous. 
On account of this very cause many a future candidate 
for show-yard honors is, during this period of rapid cell pro 
liferation in calfhood, storing up in his system the seeds of ai 
incurable malady which will, ere long, render him only val 
uable as a pathological curiosity to the student of veterinary 
science. 
Any kind of ingesta may prove a carrier of the contagium 
Many of the carnivora, as well as chickens and pigs, fre 
quently get infected by eating the viscera of animals slaugl 
