1 Jay., 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 73 
TUBERCULOSIS. 
In the course of a speech delivered to the students on the occasion of the 
opening of the new session of the Royal Veterinary College, Camden Town 
(London), Mr. Walter Long referred to the efforts being made to stamp out 
tuberculosis by means of tuberculin. The Royal Commission of this year had 
favoured the use of this medicme, and had reported that one dose for each 
cow cost 3d., whereas the expense of testing, attendance, &c., reached 2s. 8d. 
for each cow. With regard to the valuable discovery to which he was referring, 
it might also be said that it was the most important one of the age, because if 
they succeeded in stamping out tuberculosis in animals, by means of tuberculin, 
it was believed they would be able to do the same thing with human beings, 
so that consumption—that dreadful scourge, which it had been said could 
neither be prevented nor cured—might also be stamped out. 
TUBERCULOSIS AND INFECTION. 
DOES MEAT CONVEY THE DISEASE? 
Proressor Nocarp having injected from ten to twenty minims of muscle 
(meat) juice into guinea-pigs, derived from the tuberculous hearts of animals 
dead of the disease, found that none of them became affected. Another 
experiment performed by the same authority upon forty guinea-pigs resulted 
in the inoculation of one only, that is to say in the production of tubercle. 
He concluded that, if there were danger in the flesh of tuberculous animals, 
it was quite exceptional. Martin’s experiments, made for the Royal Com- 
missioners, showed the bacillus to be present in two guinea-pigs out of twenty- 
one inoculated with the virus. 
Sims Woodhead’s experiments on cooked meats are rather startling, as we 
had grown to bélieve ourselves safe from tubercle bacillus in food, if properly 
cooked. He says that in joints over about 6 lb. weight the temperature 
in the middle seldom exceeds 60 degrees F., no matter how high the outside 
temperature. “This isan hard saying; who shall hear it?’ Could we really 
get meat nicely cooked (“ the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat ””) without 
the temperature going higher than the atmosphere of an average autumn day ? 
Mr. BE. Marrison, M.R.C.V.S., in an essay on the subject, referring to the 
above experiments, comes to the conelusion that “ food derived from tuber- 
culous animals can produce the disease in healthy animals, and therefore 1 
think we are perfectly justified in condemning all such carcases.” So says 
Mr. Marrison, but it is fortunate, as we have before pointed out, that our 
British Government moves slowly, and that the opinions of enthusiasts are not 
immediately acted upon without time and trial and long observation by inde- 
pendent observers. tis a fact that from time to time some very important sub- 
ject is taken up with an enthusiasm which develops into a firm conviction without 
proof. Scientific men of all others should be free from these passing illusions ; 
they are but men withall their study and devotion to the promotion of knowledge ; 
hence they become infected with notions which would land their Governments 
into such mistakes as that made by the young German monarch, when he 
foreed the hand of Koch. Curiously enough, Mr. Marrison adds, a little later 
on, ‘whether the disease in man is contagious is an open question, though 
numerous cases of supposed communication between man and wife, brothers 
and sisters, have been reported, and Ransome showed that tubercle bacilli were 
present in the breath in phthisis. On the other hand, the experience in 
consumption hospitals does not support this view, there being no evidence of 
the communication of the disease to nurses and hospital attendants.” Then 
who on earth would be infected, if not nurses and hospital attendants always 
among the bacilli floating in the air breathed by phthisical patients? Really 
it does seem like “straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel” when our 
scientific men minimise the hereditary danger of consumption, and try to prove 
that husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, catch the complaint of each 
