TUBERCULOSIS IN CATTLE. 19 
bodies would not pass inspection. \Ve must remember, lastly, 
that many a case of tuberculosis, if it be a very slight one, will 
escape Observation entirely. Kemembering these facts, and 
considering that the slaughter-house records give us a preva- 
lence of tuberculosis sometimes as high as fifty per cent., 
Or more, it is thoroughly demonstrated that the amount of 
tuberculosis among cattle in Europe is really very great. In 
the most recently reported statistics from the slaughter houses 
in Kiel, a city of North Germany, it is stated that sixty-six per 
cent. of the cows imported from Denmark have been found 
to be tuberculous. It is probably impossible to give any statis- 
tics of American cattle that would be comparable to these, 
chiefly because we have no complete slaughter-house records. 
Animals are slaughtered in the United States in so many 
private slaughter-houses, and official inspection is such a rarity, 
that we have no slaughter-house statistics that can be com- 
pared with these in Europe. 
If we take the results of tuberculin inoculation we shall 
find that they are decidedly higner than those derived from 
slaughter-houses. In some of the northern countries the con- 
clusion has been reached by those who have most studied the 
matter that the amount of tuberculosis is over fifty per cent. 
of all the animals in the land. Many small herds, especially 
those which have been all bred on one farm without pur- 
chase, will be entirely free. Larger herds, on the other hand, 
will have seventy and eighty per cent., and many large farms 
can be found without a single sound animal. But, taken alto- 
gether, it is admitted without any dispute that the amount of 
the disease in some northern countries is very nearly fifty per 
cent. This means, of course, that about one-half of the ani- 
_mals are afflicted with tuberculosis. 
In general, then, as to the prevalence of tuberculosis, we 
may say that it varies very widely, running from zero up as 
high as fifty per cent. In some countries it may be small, but 
in none of the thickly-settled countries is the presence much 
less than ten per cent., and in most of them very much greater 
than this. 
C. THE INCREASE OF THE DISEASE AMONG CATTLE. 
A very vital question connected with the whole subject 
is whether tuberculosis among our cattle is on the increase 
at the present time. There is undoubtedly a very widespread 
