BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS. 
367 
i—- 
As for good light, every schoolboy knows how essential 
it is, yet if not wanting entirely, the light is often a mere 
apology for that commodity. Cattle need light every whit as 
much as either plant or human beings, and yet I could take 
you to-day to barns that are supposed to be first-class in every 
respect, where one needs a lantern to find out whether the pens 
are occupied or not. 
Perhaps, however, the most important factor in predispos¬ 
ing the dairy cattle to tuberculosis is the injudicious manage¬ 
ment of the dairy stock themselves. 
It is generally recognized in the medical profession that 
when a woman becomes pregnant she should not be allowed 
to nurse her child, otherwise both herself and her offspring 
will be the worse for it, both will suffer in health. Fagge 
says, “ In the female childbearing seems to play an important 
part, among the causes of phthisis; and according to Dr. Pol¬ 
lock, it is not so much prolonged suckling that seems to set 
up phthisis, but the mere fact, of suckling at all. Cases asso¬ 
ciated with childbirth generally run a particularly acute 
course.” 
In referring to the foregoing, Dr. Pye Smith says, “ These 
considerations are so important in regard to life insurance, 
that Sir Risdom Benett and myself have for several years 
advised the office with which we are connected to count all 
deaths of mothers in childbirth or after delivery as due to 
phthisis, unless there is explicit evidence of previous good 
health.” This is possibly an extreme view, but if it is the 
case, or even if it is only in part true, what must be the result 
when the dairy cow is not only milked when pregnant, but 
milked right up to the time of calving; they are fed so as 
to produce the greatest possible quantity of milk, and every 
year the dairy cow is expected to bear a calf with unfailing 
regularity; and when one remembers that this process is 
kept up, not for one generation only, but for generation after 
generation, the wonder is that tuberculosis is not far more 
common than it is, for we have here just the very conditions 
that are most fitted for its development. Constitutions weak¬ 
ened and vitality lowered through generations of injudi- 
