BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS. 
23 
ceptibility ; and this fact seemed to him apparent from the study 
of diseases other than tuberculosis. 
To devoid predisposttio 7 t then, in order to be “born right” a 
man must ante-date to the vigorous ancestry of his great, great- 
grand parents ; and if this principle of heredity were kept in 
mind in breeding dairy cattle there would not be so much tu¬ 
berculosis. 
Blakewell, one of the most noted breeders of live stock in 
Great Britain, regarded the animals on his farm as wax in his 
hands, out of which in good time he could mould any form that 
he desired to create. He believed that the familiar maxim, • 
“ like begets like,” was not limited to a general similarity of 
off-spring to parent, but extended to the minutest details of the 
animal organism. 
Tuberculosis is far less easily communicable to other indi¬ 
viduals than such parasitic diseases as anthrax or diphtheria, 
typhoid fever and Asiatic cholera ; and no germ will cause in¬ 
fection unless it finds nutritive conditions of such a nature as to 
render it pathogenic (disease producing), and as a rule, between 
diseased and absolutely healthy individuals does not exist. In 
other words, tuberculosis is only easily infectious in individual 
men or cattle possessing certain acquired weakness, unnatural 
to them in health. The study of bovine tuberculosis indicates 
that the essential environmental conditions favorable to the 
production and support of a constitution insusceptible to the ac¬ 
tion of tubercle bacilli, is one which offers the freest possible 
exposure to the elements, and an abundance of untrammelled 
exercise in the open air. 
{To be continued.) 
Jury Duty in England.— A number of veterinary medical 
societies of England are agitating the passage of an act of Par¬ 
liament exempting members of the profession from serving upon 
juries. It was the opinion of the Yorkshire Association that 
the question should be continually agitated, but that the chances 
of its being acceded to are very slim. 
