388 
DAVID S. WHITE. 
made to circumscribe and combat the plague by butchering those 
animals presenting well-marked clinical symptoms, those in 
which the disease had become acute or from the morbid process 
undermining of the animal’s whole system, making if appear a 
thin, emaciated, hide-bound, coughing object of ill-health. To 
this was added a disinfection, a spreading of certain chemicals 
about the stable. Such methods were never availing of much 
result; it was usually not long before another cow would “ go 
the same way.” Not so much from acute cases is tuberculosis 
spread, as they soon die, but from the chronic, latent cases. Until 
within the past few years, with the exception of a few sporadic 
attempts at preventing the spread of consumption in foreign 
countries and in our New England States, little has been done 
towards the eradication of this “ White Plague of the North.” 
Until fourteen years ago the cause of the disease was shrouded 
in mystery. 
In 1882 R.Koch announced to a gathering of physicians in Ber¬ 
lin that he had discovered the true and only causes of consump¬ 
tion in man and animals to be a microscopic plant of low order— 
the bacillus tuberciUosis. Though often assailed, this assumption 
has never been disproven. At the present time it is even ac¬ 
cepted by a large part of the laity, that to have tuberculosis we 
must have the tubercle bacillus. Without this germ no con¬ 
sumption. Having determined the cause of consumption, Koch 
turned his attention towards finding a cure, and a few years later 
announced that by inoculating phthisical patients with a product 
of the germ which he called tuberculin he could induce a heal¬ 
ing, respectively on encapsuling of the tubercular lesion. His 
efforts have, however, not been crowned with success. At the 
Veterinary Institute in Dorpat, Russia, in 1890-1891, tuberculin 
was tried on notoriously tubercular cattle to note its effect upon 
consumptive animals. A rise in temperature in every case of 
2° F. and over above the normal first drew the attention of 
veterinarians to its value as a diagnostic agent. In non-tuber- 
cular cattle there was no rise manifest. Since that time 
thousands of cattle have been subjected to a tuberculin test and 
