VIRULENCE OF BLOOD AND MUSCLES IN TUBERCULOSIS. 241 
elusion that such carcases may with safety be passed for con¬ 
sumption provided the visibly diseased ofgans be confiscated. 1 
Veyssiere and Humbert’s 2 experiments are very far from 
convincing. No information is given regarding the extent or 
distribution of the lesions in the two carcases from which the 
muscular tissue was taken, it being merely remarked that the 
animals were “in very good condition.” Besides, it is not 
stated that any special precautions were taken in cutting out 
the flesh or in the other steps of the operation ; and although 
the inoculation was intra-peritoneal, the peritoneum itself 
appears to have been healthy at the autopsy. There is there¬ 
fore room for suspicion that the tuberculous lesions in the 
experimental animals owed their origin to an accidental in¬ 
fection. 
The details of Professor Arloing’s 2 experiments and those 
of the 3 by Gratia and Lienaux are not stated in the refer¬ 
ences to which I have access; but assuming that the animals 
furnishing the muscle-juice in these 5 cases were not the sub¬ 
jects of a general tuberculosis, and that the experiments are 
not open to any objection on the score of inadequate pre¬ 
cautions to prevent accidental infection, we have remaining 
from the total of 84 experiments with meat juice 55 that are 
still valid ; and of these 51 had a negative and 4 a positive 
result. 
It might thus be said that there is evidence to show that 
the muscular tissue of the body contains virulent bacilli in 
nearly 8 per cent, of cases of apparently (as regards the dis¬ 
tribution of the visible lesions) local tuberculosis. But it is 
surely a remarkable fact that 3 of the positive results were 
obtained in 2 series with a total of 5 experiments, while in 3 
other series with a total of 55 experiments the result was 
positive in only 1 case. How can one explain the fact that 
Arloing, Gratia, and Lienaux found the muscular juice in¬ 
fective in 60 per cent, of the carcases examined by them, 
while 3 other experimenters found it infective in less than 2 
per cent.? With results so very discrepant it would almost 
1 Reference in the Centralblatt far Bacteriologie, 1892, p. 11. 
