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1911
118
2. Mammals and man can be reciprocally infected with tuberculosis.
3. The transmission of tuberculosis from animals to man must be
mainly dependent on the susceptibility of any given animal to this disease
and on the opportunities afforded such animal for transferring the acquired
and developed infection in the human subject; and that animals, domestic
and otherwise, which have been found capable of suffering from severe
generalized tuberculosis of the human type are comparatively few; and,
further, that none of these active multipliers of tuberculosis are common
food animals. Thus the bovine animal is not an active multiplier of the
human tubercle bacillus, nor has the cow herself, however, she may
excrete bovine bacilli in her milk, been convicted of eliminating human
tubercle bacilli in this way. It cannot, however, be affirmed that man is
wholly free from risk of being infected through animal food with human
tuberculosis.
Also with regard to the transmission of bovine bacilli to man, that
only rarely has a pulmonary lesion in adult man yielded the bovine
bacillus, but that their experience of abdominal tuberculosis has been
very different, and that, of young children dying from primary abdominal
tuberculosis, the fatal lesions could in nearly one-half of the cases be referred
to the bovine bacillus and to that type alone. In children, too, and often in
adolescents, suffering from cervical gland tuberculosis, a large proportion of
the cases examined by them could be referred to the bovine tuberculosis ;
and that there can be no doubt that a considerable proportion of the tuberculosis
affecting children, especially that affecting the abdominal organs
and the cervical glands, is of bovine origin. Also that primary abdominal
tuberculosis as well as tuberculosis of the cervical glands is commonly due
to infection of the tuberculous infective material. Consequently the
evidence goes to demonstrate that a considerable amount of the tuberculosis
of childhood is to be ascribed to infection from bacilli of the bovine
type transmitted to children in meals consisting largely of the milk of
the cow.
Now that the British, the German and the United States Commissions
have reported on these grave matters in similar strain, is it too much to hope
that the. sale of tuberculous milk and tuberculous meat, the former especially,
shall be prevented, and that tuberculous animals shall be eliminated from the
herds of these islands ?
It is now time to examine the returns as to the separate diseases, which
are classed as tuberculous.