EDITORIAL. 
315 
preference to that of the cow, when by some cause or another 
human milk could not be given to them. 
His principal remarks were to the effect that cows are sub¬ 
ject to tuberculosis; their milk is often the carrier of the 
bacilli. Cases of contagion on record are quite numerous. 
Pasteurization is scarcely a sure guard ; boiling only seems to 
give this result. The milk of the mother is the perfect food. 
Between the two, the milk of the goat finds its calling. Tuber¬ 
culous bacilli are very rare in it, and in organic principles it 
is close to that of women ; almost equal to it. In antiquity 
goats were with women considered as the true nurses, etc., etc. 
The subject is not new ; the question has already been agi" 
tated even during the congress of 1900, and will probably be con¬ 
sidered again in that which is to be held this summer in England. 
At any rate, our friend Pion, in the Semaine Veterinaire , tells 
us that there is actually in Paris an establishment where goats 
are kept strictly for their milk production. 
For years back visitors to the French capital were awakened 
by the sounds of pandean pipes, played by a man, a shepherd 
from the mountains of Switzerland (unless he came from the 
suburbs or other places closer by). He was accompanied by a 
flock of eight or ten goats, with pendulous udders, gorged with 
milk, which he would milk and sell. Another trade which will 
have seen its end with the birth of the twentieth century, pro¬ 
viding the farm for the goats is a success. 
At any rate, there will be great probability that the milk 
obtained from the new farm will be safer to consume than that 
of the Swiss shepherd. On the farm the stock will be sub¬ 
mitted to every sanitary precaution ; they will receive good 
food, be kept with the best rules of hygiene, will be tested with 
tuberculin ; while the poor beasts of which they will take the 
place were, no doubt, deprived of such good treatment, and in 
many instances had to satisfy their appetites by searching for 
and eating whatever they could find in the ash barrels or boxes 
in the streets ; and every one knows that goats are not very 
particular as to the selection of their menu. A. L. 
