230 
JAMES LAW 
ufactured products of the latter—butter and cheese. Some even 
hold that in animals giving milk the system does not suffer mate¬ 
rially, but that it is saved by the drainage of the germs through 
the mammary glands, and that thus a milk-sick cow may remain 
for a considerable time unsuspected, while her milk, butter, and 
cheese are conveying mental and physical decay and death to 
many human beings, near and remote. For the disorder proves 
as fatal in man as in animals, and if in particular cases it fails to 
destroy life, it usually leaves the subject in a condition of hebetude 
and physical weakness that makes life miserable. 
The permanence of the germ in butter and cheese renders in¬ 
evitable the conclusion of physicians in milk-sick districts, that 
cases of this disease must be frequent in city populations, but 
that its true nature is not recognised by the medical attendants. 
The whole subject demands a thorough experimental investigation 
at the hands of the National Board of Health, so that the true 
source and germ of the malady may be discovered, if possible, 
and that in any case intelligent measures may be taken to prevent 
its conveyance out of its native habitat. 
SMALL-POX IN BIRDS. 
In Europe and Hindostan variola is so common in pigeons and 
poultry as to constitute a veritable plague. Thus Guersent records 
that out of a dovecote of 1,000 scarce 100 could be found that 
did not bear marks of the disease, while Tytler says the poultry- 
yards in India were habitually depopulated by the plague. Becli- 
stein and others claim that this is the true small-pox derived from 
the human being and eonveyable back to man, while others, like 
Toggia and Gilbert, assert that it is communicable to the sheep. 
That this affection has not been recognized among us may be due 
to a difference in the environment which modifies the infection, 
or, perhaps, to the fact that men and pigeons do not live so much 
in common here as in Italy and India. Such an occurrence under 
Italian skies should, however, demand a careful investigation into 
the reality of such' infection in our own States, and especially 
the Southern ones, during the prevalence of an epidemic of small¬ 
pox, so that whatever danger arises from this source may be de¬ 
tected and guarded against. 
