136 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL, [1 Frn., 1899. 
General Notes. 
TUBERCULOSIS AND OUR MILK SUPPLIES. 
Tne second Harben Lecture on Tuberculosis was delivered at the Medical 
Examination Hall, Victoria Embankment, last month, by Sir Richard Thorne 
Thorne, K.C.B., on the subject of the administrative control of our milk 
supplies in relation to tuberculosis inman. He reverted to the fact during 
the last half-century there has been an immense reduction in the death-rate 
from many forms of tuberculosis, notably phthisis, in connection with great 
sanitary improvements that had been effected, and he now pointed out that 
infants and children must, according to all experience, have benefited 
correspondingly. But, when we came to examine the death-rates from Tabes 
mesenterica, a form of tuberculosis, in which the infection is received into the 
alimentary canal instead of the lungs, it was found not only that all the gain 
attained at other ages had been lost in the case of children and infants, but 
that, in addition to this, there had been a very heavy increase in deaths from 
this cause under one year of age. This increase had gone hand in hand with a 
steady increase in the consumption of cow’s milk as a food in this country— 
English people being almost the only civilised nation in the world who 
habitually consumed uncooked milk. He then showed from official returns 
how large was the amount of tuberculosis amongst milch cows; and, quoting 
the report of the Royal Commission on which he had served, he explained that 
the artificial conditions under which milk was now produced in cow- 
houses, which the animals sometimes never left for a moment during 
a period at times reaching a whole year, were precisely those most 
certain to produce that increase of this disease in cows which had 
been going on. Fortunately, the immediate danger to man was limited to the 
existence of tuberculosis in the cow’s udder; but the early stages of this were 
most difficult to detect, and it was a form of tuberculosis which tended at times 
to spread with great rapidity. The danger to man, and especially to our infant 
population, was one of real gravity, and the loss of child life due to this disease 
in milch cows was appalling. He did not recommend, as some had done, the 
removal of every tubercular cow from our dairies and cowsheds, for this, at the 
lowest estimate, would mean the removal at once of over half a million cows from 
our milk supply; but all cows with advanced tuberculosis in any part of the 
body, and all cows with suspicious udder disease, should be at once seized and 
slaughtered. Amongst the most prominent of remedies was the provision of 
adequate cubic and floor space in cowsheds, so as to ensure proper ventilation ; 
and he showed that this was often more necessary in country than in town 
cowhouses, because the latter are often much more under control than the 
former. Both in Liverpool and Manchester the number of samples of milk 
containing tubercle bacilli was far greater in country milk than in that obtained 
in those cities themselves. THe further advocated frequent and systematic 
inspection of cowsheds and dairies by expert officials, As regards compensa- 
tion for animals seized, his views were not the same as those which he had 
expressed against any such payment from public funds in the case of the 
seizure of tuberculous carcasses voluntarily put on sale by the butcher. In 
the case of the milch cow, the miik alone was placed on sale; and, whilst the 
use of the milk should be stopped, the cow might be perfectly good and 
of value for feeding purposes to be sold as meat; and whatever value 
attached to a cow in this sense should be repaid if the animal was seized 
and slaughtered by the local authority. He further maintained, as he did 
in the case of our meat supplies, that any stringency of control over 
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