674 
SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
but we ought to use all necessary hygienic precautions so that 
no infectious matter may be carried. Washing the hands in 
water after exposure to actinomycotic suppurations will be 
enoughto eliminate all dangers of infection. As contagion from 
animals to man is then doubtful we ought to give the human 
family the benefit of the doubt and reject for consumption all 
meats suffering with generalized actinomycosis, or where we 
find a fistulous tract opening into the mouth, and where the 
glands contiguous to the wound are diseased. 
DISCUSSION. 
Dr. Stewart: Owing to the absence of Dr. Bennett, who 
was announced to open the discussion of this paper, I will un¬ 
dertake to do so. And, first, I wish to compliment the essayist 
upon his careful preparation of the paper, and particularly upon 
the careful and systematic arrangement of the history, pathol¬ 
ogy and symptomatology of the disease. While the paper does 
not deal very fully with the problem of the treatment of the 
malady under consideration, yet it alludes to both medical and 
surgical interference. In illustration of the value of this side 
of the pioblem, I wish to relate a statement made to me by a 
practitioner living some thirty miles east of Omaha, while I was 
in attendance at a meeting of the Iowa and Nebraska associa¬ 
tions in Omaha last week. He said that the treatment of acti¬ 
nomycosis was a profitable phase of his business; that he had 
been called to treat some ten or eleven case’s, in one bunch, on 
the day previous to the meeting, and that he received five dol¬ 
lars for each case, the price current in that section ; that he 
had received several such calls recently, and you can imagine 
that that soit of business would make him feel in good humor. 
Hence I feel that the practical side of this subject is of special 
importance to the practitioner in the country. The value of 
undertaking treatment will depend upon one’s point of view. 
If the animals can be rendered marketable, the practitioner will 
hold that it is worth while, as also will his client. The meat 
inspectoi will find that while the external lesions have been de¬ 
stroyed or removed the internal lesions are still present, and 
would hold that tieatment was of no great value. Relative to 
the employment of iodine internally administered, I wish to 
report some cases that we treated in the stock-yards at Omaha, 
and slaughtered to determine the results. In the cases where 
the soft parts alone were involved, the actinomycotic growths 
disappeared, also the tumefactions produced by them, and 
where the bony tissues were invaded the size of the tumors was 
