IDENTITY IN DISEASES 
143 
would still be one even though tuberculosis had been experimentally 
produced in children by feeding them with milk from tuberculous 
cattle, until the contrary had been proven by direct experiment 
upon cattle, for this would only prove that this was a cause, not 
the only cause capable of producing tuberculosis in children. 
The questions of ^etiological identity are only to be settled in the 
experimental laboratory, and not over the u grime tasch,” as the 
Germans say. They are as yet among the things we most desire 
and need to know in reference to disease, and from which we can 
alone expect beneficial results of a high degree. 
We do not wish to be understood as saying that tuberculosis 
is not the result of specific infection ; we only mean to assert that 
the identity of the specifica is not yet proven, and also to incite 
all our colleagues by most careful attention to aid in confirming 
the identity, or in settling the ontogenesis of the specifica with 
reference to the hypothetic connection between human and bovine 
tuberculosis. As to children , we have no need to make experi¬ 
ments, the feeding experiments are plentiful enough; we have 
only to enter in connection with the medical profession, carefully 
gather statistics, and make careful observation, for the vivisection 
will be attended to by fond parents, in spite of the society against 
cruelty to animals. 
Another much more unfounded assertion of identity has long 
enough existed in our literature, and still finals supporters. That is, 
that the equine family are the subjects of “ typhoid fever,” “ ty¬ 
phus abdominalis.” The name “typhus abdominalis ” has been 
given by medicmers to a peculiar infectious and contagious dis¬ 
ease of man, owing its genesis to an unknown specific cause, 
and this disease does not and has not come to pass by horses, all 
authorities existing or having existed to the contrary. That the 
fever accompanying many equine infectious diseases may produce 
typhoid, typhous phenomena, we should be the last to deny ; but 
we do deny any identity between the diseases and the specific dis¬ 
ease of man. Were this mtiological identity a fact, not only our¬ 
selves but hundreds of our colleagues would long since have been 
dead, for we know that this so-called typhoid fever, better “ febris 
putrida,” or still better, “ septicaemia infectiosum,” or “ purpura 
