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other causes which tend to lower the vitality, and thus
indirectly make people more subject to the attacks of those
diseases, should be corrected. The objects of a Health Authority
should be to induce the population to live under the most favourable
sanitary conditions, so that they may be able the better to resist the
onset of these infectious diseases, and secondly, by prompt measures,
to arrest the spread of such diseases as soon after their occurrence as
possible, and having found the source of the infection, to try and
stamp it out.
Tuberculosis is also one of the preventible diseases which not
uncommonly affects the human race ; it also depends for its existence
upon bacilli, which generally enter the body by way of the mouth in
the shape of a very unwelcome and harmful addition to the food. The
chief vehicle is milk, which has become infected either from the cows
suffering from tubercular disease affecting the internal parts, such as
the lungs, glands, &c., or, more frequently, from a superficial tubercular
ulceration of the teats. It has also been decided that the meat from
animals suffering severely from tuberculosis can convey the disease. It
may be stated that if such meat is well cooked and the tubercle carrying
milk either scalded or boiled, the bacilli are rendered harmless, but
even supposing that to be so, are people to be subjected to the risks
attendant on these processes, should not the aim rather be to make it
a penal offence for any one to sell such meat or milk. The only way
I know of to prevent such infected meat being put on the market is for
properly instructed inspectors to view the carcasses and condemn any
meat they may consider unfit for consumption, aud this can hardly be
done until public abattoirs come into more frequent use. As regards
milk, the public can to a certain extent be protected by periodical
examinations of the cows, and there is yet a more sure test in what is
called the tuberculin treatment, with which experts can tell whether
animals are affected with tubercle or not, I believe that before long
all large dairies will in self-defence be obliged to be able to certify to
their customers that the cows which give their milk supply have
successfully undergone the tuberculin test, something of this sort will
have to be done; the public must be protected from the dangers
incident to the consumption of meat or milk tainted with tubercle; a
large percentage of cattle are said to be suffering from this disease,
more especially cows which are kept in stalls for a large part of the
year and fed on food calculated to stimulate the production of the
largest quantity of milk (quantity, not quality, being the desideratum of