SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
406 
of “ Tuberculosis.” He explained the importance of the subject 
to the veterinary profession, owing to the alarming increase of the 
disease in the finer breeds and more valuable cattle, especially 
among the shorthorns, Devons, Ayrshires and Alderneys. In¬ 
stances could be adduced of valuable herds being decimated, and 
the owners ruined by it. He explained the pathological anatomy 
of tubercle, and pointed out the fact that it was a common error 
in both professions to suppose that caseation was always to be 
taken as tubercle. He explained that this degeneration of fluid, 
such as pus or that form of caseation so easily induced in rabbits, 
erroneously called yellow tubercle, was not really so. When an 
animal was inoculated with tubercle it invariably became tubercu¬ 
lous. and while septicemia or blood-poisoning may result from 
inoculation with simple caseous substance, tuberculosis never did. 
He next drew the attention of the members to the experiments 
of European investigators, which went to prove conclusively that 
tuberculosis was communicable from one animal to another by 
ingestion of tuberculous matter, by the flesh and fluid of tubercu¬ 
lous animals, by the milk, by the expectorated sputum, and by 
the stalls and feed boxes in which tuberculous animals have been 
kept. The reports which were read of experiments to prove these 
facts, were very conclusive. The hereditary nature of the disease 
was long known. It was, therefore, clearly the duty of this pro¬ 
fession to advise stock-owners not to trifle with this insidious 
plague in their herds, but to take the only safe plan to rid them¬ 
selves of it, which is not only not to breed from them, but to 
kill them off and bury or burn their carcasses. The disease was 
now far more common than it ever was, because cattle breeding 
was now more extensively carried on, and he felt convinced that 
it was spread and bred through ignorance of its nature. 
In this paper it was not his intention to speak of it in a sani¬ 
tary point of view, but he could not conclude without remarking 
that what is true of its communicability from one animal to an¬ 
other is also true of its communicability to the human family, and 
where the milk or flesh of consumptive cattle was allowed to be 
eaten by people,he had no doubt that the disease would be commun¬ 
icated in many instances. True, the gastric fluids were all-powerful 
