i6 
BULLETIN 66. 
and in cattle has long been considered identical and in 
view of the many facts supporting such belief so well pre¬ 
sented by Dr. Glover in Part I. of this Bulletin, it is well 
that everyone should understand the possible danger and 
take such precautions as will save money loss with stock, 
and protect against personal contagion. It is reported that 
Dr. Koch, before the London conference on tuberculosis, 
expressed the opinion that human and bovine tuberculosis 
are not due to the same germ. If reports are true, Dr. 
Koch believes that there is proof that human tuberculosis 
cannot be transmitted to cattle and, while not demonstrated, 
he thinks bovine consumption not transmissible to man. 
Dr. Koch discovered the true cause of tuberculosis and 
fully demonstrated the germ nature of the disease. He is 
one of the world’s greatest authorities and his opinion 
should be given much weight. However, scientists are 
often misquoted and a simple statement of a failure to pro¬ 
duce certain expected results in an experiment is twisted 
into a quotation from an authority, that it is an impossibility 
to produce the results. Newspaper misquoting and report- 
orial enlargement of scientists’ statements are often mis¬ 
taken for true science. It opens the way for ridicule and 
prejudice and does much to retard the acceptance of scien¬ 
tific facts. If Dr. Koch failed to transmit tuberculosis from 
man to cattle, or if he has discovered differences in the 
germs from animals and men which led him to doubt the 
identity of the two forms of the disease, it does not neces¬ 
sarily follow that the expression of this doubt is a statement 
of fact that there is one form of the disease in cattle and 
another in man and that they are never transmissible from 
one to the other. Dr. Koch thought that his lymph or 
tuberculin was a cure for tuberculosis. It was a wonderful 
discovery and a most important one, but because it failed to 
cure human tuberculosis is no reason for rejecting the 
careful scientific work of the man. The principle of using 
the toxin or poison produced by a germ to destroy the 
germ, or its power to live in the sytem, was established by 
Jenner when he introduced vaccination against small pox 
and is successfully used as a cure of the disease in diph¬ 
theria. One of our state papers (The Eastonville World) 
takes a sensible view of the present statements of Koch, 
that he doubts the general infection of man with bovine 
tuberculosis, and points out the fact that we need not 
plunge into the use of unsanitary milk, butter and beef 
because a scientist has expressed such a doubt. Before 
