View report page

and the disinfection and cleansing of the room lately
occupied and of its contents is immediately taken in
hand.
Tuberculosis.— The Royal Commission on
Tuberculosis has just issued, in January of the
present year, its second interim report, and it is
one which will attract considerable attention, and in
all probability lead to legislation in due course. In
March, 1899, the Local Government Board, as a
corollary to the first interim report, which had then
shortly before been presented, issued a circular letter,
together with Model Regulations amending the previously
existing Dairies and Cowsheds Order of 1885,
to the various Local Authorities throughout the
country. The necessity for this was that though
the 1885 Order dealt with disease existing amongst
cattle in a dairy or cowshed, the term "disease"
was by that Order limited to those included in the
Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 1878, of which
tuberculosis was not one. When the Royal Commission
had demonstrated the danger of tuberculosis
being transmitted both by milk and as meat, the
Local Government Board, seeing that Local Authorities
had no power to deal with tuberculosis in
milch cows, proceeded by these amended regulations
to provide authority for a "Council to employ
and pay a veterinary surgeon with a view of obtaining
a certificate or to appoint him as an
officer for this purpose, if they thought fit to do
so." This was of the first importance, but, since
22