TUBERCULOSIS IN MASSACHUSETTS 
385 
Committees on Agriculture and Public Health, the Commis¬ 
sioners again referred to the methods that had so successfully 
been employed in eradicating contagious pleuro-pneumonia, 
the inference being that these methods would be equally suc¬ 
cessful with tuberculosis. At these hearings the opponents 
of the Cattle Commissioners developed unexpected strength. 
There was a feeling among them that tuberculosis could not 
be handled in the same way as contagious pleuro-pneumonia. 
Contagious pleuro-pneumonia is an extremely rapid and fatal 
disease; it will usually develop in from three to six weeks 
after exposure, and often acute cases are fatal in from seven 
to twenty days after the animal is attacked. On an average 
from sixty to eighty per cent, of animals exposed will con¬ 
tract the disease, and about fifty per cent, of these will die. 
On the other hand, bovine tuberculosis is an extremely 
slow and chronic disease ; it is not a fatal disease, but it has a 
tendency to become self-limiting; it is not a highly conta¬ 
gious disease, for a large proportion of cases are entirely 
harmless, and usually long exposure and intimate association 
are necessary before infection takes place; and, further, it is 
not confined to the bovine, but is found in all domestic ani¬ 
mals, as well as man. 
When the last case of contagious pleuro-pneumonia is de¬ 
stroyed the danger ceases to exist; with tuberculosis it is en¬ 
tirely different. In fact, the conditions surrounding the two 
diseases are so dissimilar that it is impossible to draw any an¬ 
alogy between them. 
Further, it is believed that the danger was not so great as 
to justify such extreme measures as those proposed; for, 
while there is a certain element of danger in the use of the 
meat or milk of cows that were badly diseased\ yet these cases 
could, as a rule, be picked out by physical examination, and 
with the use of tuberculin in suspicious cases the danger 
would be reduced to a minimum, and would be by no means 
so great as to justify the use of tuberculin throughout the 
State, with the accompanying expense to the State and loss 
to the farmers which would result from the total destruction 
of all animals that would react to the test. 
