306 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Sxez., 1899. 
The statements contained herein are accepted generally by scientific men as 
facts, and our farmers may accept them as such, care having been taken to 
avoid making statements on debatable points. The Minister trusts that 
interested parties will carefully read the bulletin, preserve it for future 
reference, and apply the suggestions contained therein to their own individual 
Cases. 
In the event of an inspector discovering the disease in one or more of the 
herd, it will be his duty to at once remove them out of the byre to an isolated 
place, in which they must remain quarantined until otherwise disposed of, 
The premises must also be disinfected to the satisfaction of the inspector. 
INDEMNITY. 
As no provision has so far been made by Parliament for the payment of 
indemnity for animals slaughtered on account of this disease, under ordinary 
circumstances no indemnity will be paid by the Minister of Agriculture. 
TUBERCULOSIS. 
This disease claims for its victims nearly, perhaps we might say, all the 
domestic animals, and few of the wild animals subjected to domestication resist 
the contagion, as is well known to keepers of menageries. Rats, mice, and other 
vermin which inhabit houses and outbuildings, not only contract the disease, 
but are active agents in spreading it. 
Some species are more susceptible than others, and contract it readily by 
eating food containing the germ of the disease, or in inhaling the dried germs 
given off from the lungs and throats of animals affected in these organs. 
The most susceptible of the domestic animals are cattle, swine, chickens, 
goats, and rabbits. ‘These contract it readily in the natural way, but it can be 
produced in sheep, dogs, cats, and horses by inoculation with tuberculous 
material. 
Tuberculosis in the lower animals is identical with consumption in the 
human family. It is due to the same germ (Bacillus tuberculosis). 
It is communicable from other animals to man, and just as readily from man 
to the lower animals, by natural infection and by inoculation. 
TUBERCLE. 
The germs (bacilli), which are living organisms of minute microscopic size, 
when they reach and become located in a tissue, produce local irritation and the 
formation of small reddened areas infiltrated with fluid and cells. These are the 
tubercles. As they become a little older they enlarge, and their colour is 
greyish or yellow from changes that take place within causing the death of the 
eae tissues. Their appearance and consistence in this way resemble that of 
cheese. 
These nodules may vary in size from a pin-head to a cocoanut ; often they 
are of stony hardness from the presence of lime salts. The tubercles may be 
confined to one organ or tissue of the body, such as the lymphatic gland, for 
example, of the mesentery or thorax, or the throat, or udder, or ovaries, &c., or 
they may be generalised throughout the body, the germs trayelling in the blood 
circulation. In this way the abdominal organs (liver, spleen, kidneys, &c.) may 
all be involved as well as those of the thorax, lungs, pleura, heart, lymph, 
glands, &c. Often the pleura and peritoneum are covered with grape-like 
excrescences whose appearances are characteristic of this disease. Whenever 
tubercles are lodged for any length of time, much destruction occurs in the 
affected tissue. 
THE TUBERCULE BACILLUS 
Ts described as a rod-shaped organism with rounded ends and a slight curve, 
requiring complex laboratory methods of cultivation and staining to prepare it 
for microscopic study. 
It is a parasitic organism, which is only found in the bodies and excretions 
of animals affected by this disease. 1t thrives badly in the sunlight, which is 
said to kill it in from a few minutes to several hours. This fact should be 
remembered in dealing with it with a view to preventing it. 
