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28
It contains a large mass of detail respecting the various experiments which have
been carried out and the conclusions which have been deduced from them. Many
of these conclusions are of the greatest importance with a view to the prevention
of consumption. I will therefore give a few of the principal results at which
the Commission has already arrived.
The fact that the bacillus of bovine tuberculosis can readily, by feeding as
well as by subcutaneous injection, give rise to generalised tuberculosis in the
anthropoid ape so nearly related to man, and indeed seems, so far as our few
experiments go, to produce this result more readily than in the bovine body
itself, has an importance so obvious that it need not be dwelt upon.
There can be no doubt that in a certain number of cases the tuberculosis
occurring in the human subject, especially in children, is the direct result of the
introduction into the human body of the bacillus of bovine tuberculosis; and
there also can be no doubt that in the majority at least of these cases the bacillus
is introduced through cows' milk. Cows' milk containing bovine tubercle bacilli
is clearly a cause of tuberculosis, and of fatal tuberculosis, in man.
Of the total sixty cases investigated by us, twenty-eight possessed clinical
histories indicating that in them the bacillus was introduced through the
alimentary canal.
These facts indicate that a very large proportion of tuberculosis contracted
by ingestion is due to tubercle bacilli of bovine source.
A very considerable amount of disease and loss of life, especially among the
young, must be attributed to the consumption of cows' milk containing tubercle
bacilli. The presence of tubercle bacilli in cows' milk can be detected, though with
some difficulty, if the proper means be adopted, and such milk ought never to be
used as food. There is far less difficulty in recognising clinically that a cow is distinctly
suffering from tuberculosis, in which case she may be yielding tuberculous
milk. The milk coining from such a cow ought not to form part of human food,
and indeed ought not to be used as food at all.
Our results clearly point to the necessity of measures more stringent than
those at present enforced being taken to prevent the sale or the consumption of
such milk.
INFLUENZA.
During the year there were only 15 deaths registered as due to influenza—
7 in St. Giles and Bloomsbury, and 8 in the Holborn District.
AN OUTBREAK SIMULATING INFLUENZA IN AN INSTITUTION.
My attention was called to an outbreak of illness at the St. Giles in the
Fields and St. George Bloomsbury Receiving Home for Children through being