624 
JOHN J. REPP. 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
TRANSMISSION OF TUBERCULOSIS THROUGH MEAT 
AND MILK. 
By John J. Repp, V.M.D., Ames, Iowa. 
Professor of Pathology and Therapeutics, and Veterinarian to the Experiment 
Station , Iowa State College. 
With the classical experiments of Villemin and Chauveau, 
made over thirty years ago, the belief arose among the leading 
students of the subject of tuberculosis that this disease of the 
various species of mammalian animals is the same as tubercu¬ 
losis of the human species and that it is capable of transmission 
among all of these species. The discovery of the germ of tuber¬ 
culosis caused many more, including the discoverer, Koch, to 
adopt this belief, although Koch tells us he did so with reserve; 
and, moreover, to refer the causation of the disease in all the 
species above mentioned to the same tubercle bacillus. This 
opinion met with ready and almost universal acceptance up to 
the last three or four years. During this time the question of 
the identity of the tubercle bacillus as found in animals and in 
man and the transmissibility of tuberculosis among these 
species has been brought under considerable debate, not only by 
the laity but by scientists as well, and work has been done by 
investigators with a view to arriving at some definite and thor¬ 
oughly defensible conclusion. 
A few scientific men have recently expressed themselves in 
such a way as to lead one to infer that they incline to the opin¬ 
ion that the tubercle bacillus as found in man is radically differ¬ 
ent from that found in cattle and that tuberculosis is not trans¬ 
missible from cattle to man. None, however, have by their state¬ 
ments attracted so much attention as did Professor Robert Koch 
of Berlin at the British Congress on Tuberculosis held recently 
in London, Bngland. Professor Koch there expressed the belief 
that tuberculosis in man is different from tuberculosis in cattle 
and cannot be transferred to cattle ; and, from another considera 
