1 Nov., 1898. ] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 339 
implanted that it is very difficult to eradicate it. It attacks there not only the 
animals but the men also who look after them. Wardsmen and hospital 
nurses are more exposed to tuberculosis than to cholera, and they pay a heavy 
tribute to it. The necessary preventive measures are not seldom voluntarily 
neglected without doing any good to anybody, and leading to a premature 
grave not only a nurse or a doctor but also a devoted mother, a wife, or a 
sister. In this disease, infection causes: more deaths than heredity. In 
standing armies more men die of tuberculosis than in the same number of the 
civil population, although the former are composed of the strongest and 
healthiest men of the nation. The safest places appear to be houses and 
hospitals for consumptives, where absolute cleanliness and minute precautions 
are observed. 
In six well-kept roomy wards, full of tuberculous patients who used to 
expectorate exclusively into Detweiler’s spittoons, Dr. Cornet could not dis- 
cover a single bacillus of tuberculosis, whilst he could always find some in other 
places. 
The same may be said of orphanages. Although in these, a great number 
of the children—about 50 per cent.—were born of consumptive parents, the 
death rate from consumption is inferior to that obtaining amongst the rest of 
the population. 
The manner of living is also more important than heredity. It is ground- 
less to be afraid of the breath or perspiration of consumptives. The most 
ordinary medium of infection is the expectorated sputum. If the consumptive 
expectorates on to the earth or on to the floor, the sputum dries up and the 
solid matter turns into dust, the minute particles of which fly about in the air. 
Tf these happen to be inbreathed by another person, the bacilli they contain 
implant themselves on the warm and humid surfaces of the respiratory organs, 
and not seldom find there a most propitious field for their development and 
multiplication. Amongst dangerous places we may reckon ill-kept, dusty 
schoolrooms, hotel bars, railway carriages, &c. 
Linen is also often a source of infection. Some patients expectorate into 
their handkerchief. The matter dries up, turns into dust, and becomes an 
active agent of infection. Bed-linen is also often the seat of numerous bacilli, 
which can become very dangerous if the linen be not carefully washed. 
Infection by means of food is not so frequent. Still it obtains, especially 
with children and infants. J/i/& is then the usual channel; more seldom, 
meat. ‘he number of tuberculous cows varies (in Switzerland) between 
2 and 20 per cent., and their milk is then nearly always contaminated. (For 
Queensland there are no statistics available yet, but it is well known that many 
dairy herds are infected, and still more of the so-called city cows.) 
It has happened that whole families, and at least in one case a whole 
boarding-school, were infected by the milk from tuberculous cows. For that 
reason no milk should be used, on any pretext whatever, without having been 
first boiled. Goats’ milk is much less dangerous, those animals being seldom 
subject to the disease. Butter can also contain large quantities of tuberculous 
bacilli. Separated butter contains them—as a rule—in smallers quantities 
than hand-made butter. A farmer’s tuberculous wife can contaminate the 
cream by simply (as is not seldom done) blowing with her breath over the cream of 
amilk-dish. Properly speaking, tuberculous meat is dangerous only when eaten 
raw or underdone, Still, it should never be sold nor fed to pigs, as these latter 
are very liable to contract the disease. 
Another very active agency of disseminating the disease is the common 
house-fly. The bacilli stick to their slimy legs as dust does to our boots. We 
have all seen them feeding on the most nauseous materials, and then walking 
over appetising dishes. ‘This is another reason why we should use in our 
houses only closed spittoons of the Detweiler’s type. 
If we could keep in check the bacilli of tuberculosis as the surgeon 
does the bacilli of suppuration, nothing would be easier than to preserve 
ourselves from tuberculosis, Unfortunately, we cannot but admit that we are 
