BOVINE - TUBERCULOSIS. 
21 
been in the habit of eating the spittle of their consumptive 
owner. The woman soon developed a well marked case of tu¬ 
berculosis of the bowels. The case in Springvale in this State 
has been already reported by me, where a woman in consump¬ 
tion had raised a flock of chickens that had access to the sputa 
cups of their owner, and after the woman died, every one of 
them were found affected with tuberculosis. 
Pieffer attended a veterinarian of good constitution, without 
hereditary pre-disposition, who cut his right thumb deeply dur¬ 
ing a post-mortem on a tuberculous cow. The wound healed 
but remained swollen. A year later pulmonary tuberculosis 
had developed and in two and one-half years after the wound the 
man died. Post-mortem examination showed tuberculosis of 
the joint of the wounded thumb and of the lungs. 
The contagion and infection of the disease being univer¬ 
sally conceded, I approach the more debatable and complex 
problem of heredity, as one having afforded me so many clinical 
and convincing evidences of its presence and importance as to 
commit me firmly to its support. It is but a few short years ago 
that the medical profession were firmly united in their belief in 
the heredity of tuberculosis, and although some modern writers 
are wavering in their faith, the laws of nature are just as im¬ 
mutable as ever, and one of the most paramount of these seems 
to be that the fundamental law of heredity is that “ like begets 
like ” or the likeness of some ancestor. Webster defines heredity 
as transmitted from a parent to a child, as hereditary bravery, 
hereditary disease, etc. As long ago as in the reign of Augustus 
Caesar, the first Latin lyric poet wrote not as a fanciful hypoth¬ 
esis, but as an established principle : 
“ The brave begotten are by the brave and good, 
There is in steers, there is in horses blood. 
The virtues of their sires. No timid dove 
Springs from the coupled eagle’s furious love.” 
Oliver Wendell Holmes gave utterance to his faith and be¬ 
lief of heredity when he said “ Of the human family I go al¬ 
ways, other things being equal, for the man who inherits fam- 
