[13]. Transactions of the Pathological Society of London, 1891, p. 332.
The experimental inoculations of cattle with sputum by T. Smith, Kruse, and Adami showed a decided lack of potency in the bovine system, but (1) they do not show that the germ at once perishes in the system of cattle; (2) they do not prove that this germ, if returned from the ox to man, would prove less pathogenic than if carried from man to man without the intervention of the ox. (3) The observations of Bollinger, Baumgarten, and Crookshank show that under certain conditions the sputum bacillus can and does produce generalized tuberculosis in cattle. (4) Diminished pathogenesis of the germ when passed from man to cattle is no guarantee that this germ, or the slightly modified germ of casual bovine tuberculosis will prove equally mild if transferred from the bovine to the human patient.
Cases of Infection of Man from Ox. Tscherning, of Copenhagen, attended a young veterinarian who had cut his finger in dissecting a tuberculous cow. The skin wound healed in three weeks, but a subcutaneous swelling persisted, an ulcer formed, and a tuberculous mass containing bacilli was removed. No secondary tubercles formed.[[14]] A parallel case occurred to a prominent American veterinarian. The diseased tissue was excised and the bacilli identified by the bacteriologist of the university with which the patient was connected, and a permanent recovery ensued.
[14]. Nocard. Dictionnaire de Med. Veterinaire. Article, Tuberculosis.
Pfeiffer, of Weimar, attended a veterinarian who had been similarly inoculated from a tuberculous cow. The patient, aged thirty-four years, had a good constitution and no tuberculous taint. The cutaneous lesion healed, but six months later there was tuberculosis in the cicatrix; pulmonary tuberculosis followed, and the patient died of this two years later. At the necropsy were found tubercular arthritis of the wounded thumb and many vomicæ in the lungs.[[15]]
[15]. Zeitschrift für Hygiene, Band iii.
The post-mortem wart (tuberculosis verrucosa cutis) is familiar to surgeons as occurring in butchers and tanners, and there is every presumption that in many cases this is of bovine origin (Martin du Magny, Hanot, Senn, Riehl, Paltauf, Osier). Gerber testifies that in exceptional cases this extends to the lymph-glands and becomes generalized.
Dr. Stang, of Amorbach, had a five-year-old, finely developed boy patient, of healthy parents, destitute of hereditary taint. He died after a few weeks’ illness with miliary tuberculosis of the lungs and enormously enlarged tubercular mesenteric glands. The cow which supplied his milk had been killed a short time before with pulmonary tuberculosis.[[16]]
[16]. Lydtin. Veterinary Congress, Brussels, 1883.
Dr. Demme, of the Children’s Hospital, Berne, had four infants, the offspring of sound parents, with no hereditary taint of tubercle, die of intestinal and mesenteric tuberculosis, having been fed on the milk of tuberculous cows. Among 2,000 tuberculous infants treated in twenty years these were the only ones in which he could exclude the probability of hereditary and other causes.[[17]]