The centrifuge used on the urine may also succeed when kidneys, bladder or prostate are affected, but the bacilli are rarely found in the absence of disease of these organs. The smegma bacillus is a source of fallacy.
The serous effusions in the affected serosæ (pleura, peritoneum, pericardium, synovial cavities) may also be centrifuged and the presence of the bacilli revealed.
The agglutination test of Arloing and Courmont though often giving positive results, (95.5 per cent. in pulmonary tuberculosis, 50 per cent. in surgical, Arloing and Courmont; 40 per cent., Knopf; 25 to 50 per cent., Lartigan); yet proved too unreliable, and frequently gave positive results when tuberculosis was absent. The best medium for cultures to be so used is 6 per cent. glycerine bouillon, and the age of the tuberculosis culture 8 to 12 days. One part of fresh blood serum of the suspected animal in a sterilized capillary tube is added to ten parts of the bacillus culture, and the tube placed in an oblique position. In 2 to 24 hours a fine sand-like material precipitates along the sides of the tube, and the microscope shows the bacilli in clumps, absolutely still without even Brownian movements. Gallemaerts found that it proved very satisfactory with the serum of Guinea pigs after three days from intraperitoneal inoculation, was less marked after inoculations subcutem, and that in man the agglutination appeared in influenza and pneumonia in the entire absence of tuberculosis. Such an uncertain test cannot be utilized in veterinary sanitary work.
Experimental inoculation with milk, expectoration, morbid discharges, the scraping of nodules, etc., is much more searching, and will detect more cases than the microscopic examination. But it fails entirely in cases in which the milk of unquestionably tuberculous animals is free from bacilli, or in which the local nodule or discharge tested is itself free from tubercle. It is a test of the local lesion and not of the entire animal system.
In choosing a subject for inoculation, the first consideration is that it must come from a healthy stock and be itself free from tuberculosis. Next, it must be of a species actively susceptible to the habitual tuberculosis of the animal from which the inoculated matter is taken. Thus for man, ox, dog and parrot, the Guinea pig is especially appropriate, while for gallinaceæ and horses, the rabbit is to be preferred. Inoculation is usually made into the peritoneal cavity.
As a period of two or three weeks is usually necessary to allow of an extensive development of tuberculosis, the method must be too often discarded on account of the delay in obtaining results.
Tuberculin test. Many stock owners still entertain an ignorant and unwarranted dread of the tuberculin test. It is quite true that, when recklessly used by ignorant or careless people it may be made a root of evil, yet as employed by the intelligent and careful expert it is not only perfectly safe, but it is the only known means of ascertaining approximately the actual number affected in a given herd. In most infected herds, living under what are in other respects, good hygienic conditions, ⅔ or ¾ are not to be detected without its aid, so that in clearing a herd from tuberculosis and placing both herd and products above suspicion the test becomes essential.
Tuberculin is the bouillon in which the tubercle bacillus has been grown, charged with the toxic products of its growth, but which has been raised to a boiling temperature to destroy all germ life, and from which the dead germs have been removed by passing it through a porcelain filter. When a physiological dose of this has been injected, subcutem, into the suspected animal, it has no effect on the non-tuberculous, while in the tuberculous it produces, in the course of the next 24 hours (usually from the 8th to the 16th), a steady rise of temperature by 2° F. or more, followed by a slow subsidence to the normal. This may last for from three to ten hours in different cases.
Among the precautions may be named:
1. The temperature of the animal is best taken at intervals, or at least, morning, noon and night, on the day preceding the injection to see that the animal shows no habitual rise at any time of the day. Yet in busy field work the one night temperature taken just before injecting will rarely fail to give a satisfactory normal as a standard for the animal. Any quotidian rise almost invariably reaches its climax at night.