[19]. Hatch Experiment Station, Massachusetts Agricultural College, Bulletin No. 3.
Dr. Gosse, of Geneva, Switzerland, spent his Sundays with his family on an estate in the hills, and his daughter, aged seventeen years, took great pleasure in drinking milk warm from the cows. Early in 1893 she sickened with an obscure illness, and after ten months died, revealing at the necropsy intestinal and mesenteric tuberculosis. The five cows on the estate were tested with tuberculin; four reacted and were killed; two showed tuberculous udders (Nocard).
Dr. H. M. Pond reports four cases of tuberculosis in one family, three of them fatal. The cows supplying the family with milk were tuberculous.[[20]]
[20]. Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal, 1888.
Dr. Faust, veterinarian, of Poughkeepsie, records the case of a family on Long Island that lost from tuberculosis 139 cows. A three-year-old child and two grown sons died of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was unknown in the parents’ families.[[21]]
[21]. Report to the Board of Health.
Dr. Kelly, veterinarian, Albany, gives the following: In a family of five a son, aged nineteen years, was very fond of milk and drank it fresh from the cow, and contracted tuberculosis. Some months later the farm herd of seventeen registered Jerseys were tested with tuberculin, and thirteen reacted and showed extensive tuberculosis when killed.
Dr. Cooper, veterinarian, Paterson, N. J., furnishes this: A child, fed on the milk of a cow, contracted tabes mesenterica. Examination revealed the presence of tubercle bacilli in the milk. The milk was then fed to ten kittens, all of which became ill and emaciated, and when killed showed tuberculosis.
Such cases, in connection with the experimental inoculations, furnish more than mere circumstantial evidence. They are corroborated and strengthened by the very uniform diffusion of tuberculosis in man and stalled cattle in practically all civilized countries. Of the closer connection in individual cases one or two instances may here be added as drawn from personal observation:
1. In one case a family cow and the owner’s wife had both advanced tuberculosis. The lady consumed a good deal of the cow’s milk, but when she gave up its use she felt decidedly better.