Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
March,  1902.  J 
Editorial  Notes  and  Comments. 
are  not  new  but  have  never  before  been  so  positively  enunciated  by 
an  authority  on  this  disease. 
"  In  an  address  before  the  Canadian  Medical  Association  in  August, 
1899,  Professor  Adami  called  attention  to  how  scanty  the  evidence 
was  to  prove  the  transmission  of  animal  tuberculosis  to  man.  He 
also  stated  that  human  tubercle  bacilli  when  inoculated  into  cattle 
would  produce  only  local  and  transient  effects.  In  a  paper  read 
before  the  British  Medical  Association,  August,  1899  {Pediatrics, 
Vol.  VIII,  No.  8,  1899)  Dr.  George  F.  Still,  after  analyzing  269 
necropsies  on  tuberculous  children  under  twelve  years  of  age,  con- 
cluded that  the  commonest  channel  of  infection  with  tuberculosis  in 
childhood  is  through  the  lung;  that  infection  through  the  intestine 
is  less  common  in  infancy  than  in  later  childhood  ;  that  milk,  there- 
fore, is  not  the  usual  source  of  tuberculosis  in  childhood,  perhaps 
due  to  precautions  taken  in  boiling  and  sterilizing ;  that  inhalation 
is  the  commonest  mode  of  infection  in  the  tuberculosis  of  childhood 
and  especially  infancy,  etc.  So  it  is  evident  that  medical  thought 
has  been  tending  in  this  direction  for  some  time.  This  is  a  subject 
of  vast  import  and  nowhere  can  the  adage  'festina  lente '  be  more 
fittingly  applied." 
On  the  other  hand,  in  the  introduction  to  his  admirable  paper  on 
the  "  Relation  of  Bovine  Tuberculosis  to  Public  Health,"  Salmon, 
the  chief  of  the  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry,  says: 
"  In  treating  of  the  communication  of  tuberculosis  from  cattle  to 
man,  it  is  first  shown  that  the  statement  that  human  tuberculosis  is 
not  communicable  to  cattle  is  unwarranted  by  the  evidence,  since 
both  Martin  in  England,  and  Chauveau  in  France  have  obtained 
positive  infection  and  extensive  disease  by  feeding  to  cattle  tuber- 
cular material  from  human  sources.  It  is  further  shown  that  the 
human  and  bovine  diseases  cannot  be  entirely  different,  because 
tuberculin  produced  from  human  bacilli  causes  reaction  in  bovine 
tuberculosis.  Another  argument  used  in  this  connection  is  that  the 
whole  list  of  diseases  which  affect  a  wide  range  of  animal  life,  being 
communicable  between  widely  separated  species  of  animals,  there  is 
no  other  disease  which  is  not  also  communicable  to  man.  The 
inference  is,  therefore,  that  as  bovine  tuberculosis  is  communicable 
to  a  large  number  of  species  and  to  widely  separated  forms  of"  ani- 
mal life,  it  is  also  communicable  to  man. 
"  As  more  direct  evidence,  there  are  cited  cases  to  establish — 
