604 
SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
the most notable exception among the great agricultural States 
of the Union. This society is the proper tribunal for the con¬ 
sideration of the question of how such an office should be 
created, and to decide if the time and conditions are right for 
such an effort to be made. 
The announcement made by Prof. Robert Koch at the Inter¬ 
national Tuberculosis Congress of London in July, of his con¬ 
viction that the bacilli of human and bovine tuberculosis were 
not identical, and that, therefore, the disease could not be trans¬ 
mitted to the human family by eating the meat or drinking 
the milk of affected cattle, startled the medical world, as it was 
a shoulder-strike at the most sacred tenets of accepted scien¬ 
tific conclusions. In all civilized countries the health authori¬ 
ties have vied with each other in a praiseworthy rivalry as to 
which shall have the most perfect system of inspection to guard 
the human family from contamination from this source, and 
while all communicable diseases are sought for, by far the one 
of most importance and most frequent occurrence is tuberculo¬ 
sis. A majority of the States of this country have laws govern¬ 
ing the control of the disease and looking toward its ultimate 
eradication, with appropriated money to pay for condemned 
animals, the flesh of which is reduced to the condition of fertil¬ 
izer. To be told that all this labor and expense which has been 
brought upon the governments largely through the agitation 
and persistency of the veterinary profession ; that all the inves¬ 
tigations, experimentation, and data which have been indulged 
in and the conclusions placed in our archives as accepted truths 
all pointing to the common origin of the bacillus tuberculosis 
was worse than useless, was a blow sufficient to take our 
breaths. It was a grave assertion to be based solely upon theo¬ 
retical grounds. The unique position of the distinguished 
scientist who made this declaration, as the discoverer of the 
germ of this disease, and therefore an acknowledged authority 
upon the subject, gave to his utterances great weight, and the 
respectful attention of the world. Probably the most baneful 
effect of his communication will be that it places a powerful 
weapon in the hands of those laymen who have for some time 
opposed the vested authorities in their efforts to carry out the 
laws against the spread of the disease, and to block legislation 
looking to an extension of the system of inspection of animals 
and their products. But, after all, it will prove a good thing, for 
medical science will not long rest content until the facts in the 
case are definitely determined, so far as such a proposition can be. 
