He quotes from Hartzell the cases of two men wounded in cleaning cattle cars, both of whom had resulting tubercle, arrested in one case by excision, but in the other advanced to generalized tuberculosis and death.
Bang gives the following Danish cases:
A merchant having two chlorotic daughters secured a fine cow to feed them fresh milk. The cow was killed tuberculous and was replaced by another which also showed tuberculosis, this time affecting the udder. The girls died of tuberculosis at 16 and 18 years. Two younger children fed on the milk of sound cows grew up healthy.
A healthy cow became tubercular, after having been placed in the same stall in which another had died of tuberculosis. A child fed almost exclusively on the milk of these two cows died of tuberculosis.
A peasant at Silkeborg drank freely of milk freshly drawn. He died of tuberculosis, as did also a cow, and later in the same stable, a pig.
A peasant had an 11 year old cow with generalized tuberculosis, implicating the udder. The wife of the peasant, formerly healthy, became tuberculous shortly after the udder became affected and died at 45. A daughter who, like her mother, used the milk of this cow, died consumptive in the same year. The husband who drank beer, and not milk, remained well.
A physician fed his two children on the milk of his tubercular cow, and lost both from tuberculosis. Neither parents nor grand-parents were tuberculous. (L. Pearson in Bull. 75, Tuberculosis of Cattle).
Thorne had reports from twenty-two Ohio physicians to the effect that they had traced tuberculosis in their patients to the use of the milk of tuberculous cows, and thirty-three who believed they had reason to suspect the meat and milk supply as the source of cases of consumption. (Ohio Exp. Stat. Bull. 108).
To these may be added the cutaneous forms of tuberculosis (tuberculosis verrucosa cutis), which occur on the hands of persons (butchers, tanners, coachmen, cooks, etc.), who handle infected products of animals. These have been described by Riehl and Paltauf, Senn, and a number of surgeons and dermatologists and the relation of the occupation to the seat of the disease is conclusive as to the source of the infection. It is the exact counterpart of the verrucosa necrogenica of the hands of persons working in the dissecting rooms of medical schools, and the source of infection is equally well established in both cases.
A strong argument for the appreciable influence of the bovine bacillus upon man (acting directly or indirectly through the pig) is that the relative death rate of Jews from tuberculosis is materially less than that of other races. It is constantly claimed that orthodox Jews who eat only kosher (rabbi inspected) beef and no pork, suffer least of all the population from tuberculosis. Dr. Gerster, judging by the burial returns of the United Synagogue and the English Registrar General’s returns, concludes that only about half the relative proportion of Hebrews suffer from consumption as do other races in the same country. Some remarkable facts come out in the report of the Royal Commission on tuberculosis in England. In England and Wales the disease had decreased 39.1 per cent, in thirty-five years, but this decrease has been mainly in pulmonary cases, while the abdominal forms decreased only 8.5 per cent. Sir Richard Thorne, indeed says, that in children of the first year there had been an actual encrease of 27.7 per cent. Northrup and Still, on the contrary, present statistics showing that in children the pulmonary form of tuberculosis is the most common (Brit. Med. Jour. 1898). If in the face of this there has been a very material encrease of the abdominal form, coincident with the notorious encrease of the disease in dairy cows and of the bottle-feeding of infants, may we not enquire how much of this is due to the greater prevalence of bottle-feeding and the infected cow’s milk? It is not for a moment supposed that the majority of infections in children come from the cow. The question is whether this encrease in the minority is not in measure chargeable on the cow. The impaired nutrition resulting in some instances from the use of cow’s milk cannot well be charged with a marked encrease of cases in which the mesenteric tubercles point so directly to infection through the food. If it is held that the tubercle bacilli in the milk are harmless, we wait for evidence of the real cause of such encrease and localization.