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Cow's milk is clearly a cause of tuberculosis, and
of fatal tuberculosis in man."
In the third interim report of the Royal Commissioners
on Tuberculosis, a further most important
relationship has been demonstrated.
Experiments have been made, and it has been
found "that in the case of cows observed to be
suffering" from tuberculosis of the lungs or
alimentary canal, the excrement has been found
to contain large numbers of living and virulent
tubercle bailli, and that this, from the point of
view of accidental tuberculous contamination of
the milk, is much more dangerous than the matter
discharged from the mouth and nostrils." The
presence of tubercular cows in the cowshed is
therefore distinctly dangerous. Some of the
bacilli which escape from their bodies in this way
are almost certain to find their way into the milk.
Milk is a nutritive medium in which a great
number of pathogenic micro-organisms grow and
multiply. They find easy access to it from the
udder of the cow when diseased, from the hands
or dress of the milkers when not clean, the atmosphere
when polluted by germ-laden dust or
effluvia, and by dirty utensils used in dairy work,
&c. Consumption is common to man and beast,
and the latest researches, as mentioned above,
prove to demonstration that it is communicable.
When the udder of a cow is affected with
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