Part 72

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.

Footnote 17:

Nocard. Dictionnaire de Med. Veterinaire. Article, Tuberculosis.

Mr. Howe, of North Hadley, Mass., lost a son, aged twenty months, from abdominal tuberculosis, three months after he had paid a week’s visit to his uncle and had been fed the milk of the uncle’s tuberculous cow. The cow showed at death generalized tuberculosis. The child had been strong and well, as were his parents.

The four-year-old son of Colonel Beecher, of Yonkers, died March, 1894, of tubercular meningitis, and the two Alderney cows which had supplied him with milk were then proved consumptive by the tuberculin test and post-mortem examination.

Footnote 18:

New York Sun, March 29, 1894.

The child of Dr. Brown, U. S. A., and now of Cornell University Medical School, was similarly cut off by tuberculosis, having been fed on the milk of a tuberculous cow.

Dr. C. H. Peabody had a child patient die of tubercular meningitis three months after the family cow had been killed for generalized tuberculosis. There had been previously no tuberculosis in the family (Ernst, Infectiousness of Milk).

A. H. Rose, of Littleton, Mass., gives the case of a child which was fed for three years on the milk of a tuberculous cow and died with abdominal tuberculosis (Ernst).

Gordon, of Quincy, Mass., records the case of a ten months old child of healthy parents and ancestry which had been fed on the milk of a cow with advanced tuberculosis, and which died after a few weeks with acute tuberculosis (Ernst).

Gage, of Lowell, Mass., had an infant patient of healthy parents and surroundings, but which subsisted exclusively on a cow’s milk that contained bacilli and infected Guinea pigs. The child died of tubercular meningitis. A second child fed the same milk suffered in a similar way (Ernst).

Andersen, of Seeland, reports the death from tuberculosis of a six months old child which had fed on the milk of a cow having tuberculosis of the udder. The mother developed symptoms of tuberculosis after the death of the child.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

2. The owner of a thoroughbred herd of sixty head had suffered for years from consumption, and attributed the poor condition of the animals to lack of care since he had been laid aside. Without the tuberculin test, I diagnosed tuberculosis in fifty-nine of the animals.