A still more injurious result comes from the order of given States, that
the admission of store cattle shall be guarded by the tuberculin test of
each animal, and the supineness or worse, of adjacent states in
establishing no effective safe guard against the disposal of the
tuberculous culls in the unprotected State. Cattle from the west or
elsewhere in the United States, arrive in a great public market as, for
example, New York, they are here tested, those that stand the test are
shipped into one of the States requiring the test (Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Canada), and those that have shown the
reaction of tuberculosis are sold into the herds of the State in which
they were tested. The most malicious enemy of the New York stock owners,
could not devise a surer means of stocking the herds of the State with
tuberculosis than this atrocious system. Yet when the present writer had
a bill introduced into the legislature to correct the evil the opposing
interest proved strong enough to prevent it from coming to a vote. The
legislative committee on tuberculosis which sat later, and upon whose
attention the subject was pressed, also practically ignored it and the
statute which this commission inspired leaves the matter as bad as
before. Under the present law the New York purchaser must secure his own
interests by having every animal he buys tested by a trustworthy
veterinarian.
_Sale of Sound Animals Concentrates the Tuberculosis._ The action of one
or more States in admitting store cattle only after a tuberculin test,
acts directly in encreasing the relative number of tuberculous animals
in adjacent States. The purchaser from Pennsylvania for instance, goes
into a New York herd and purchases all the best animals on the condition
that they pass the tuberculin test uncondemned. It follows that the New
York herd is left with the tuberculous cattle only, and those that,
aside from tuberculosis, are of low value or profitless to keep. Further
as the advance of tuberculosis is proportionate to the relative number
of tuberculous subjects in the herd or building, and the concentration
of the poison, the depreciated herd is almost certain to become rapidly
and generally affected by the disease.
_The Denial of Indemnity for Tuberculous Animals Killed._ Several
American States (and notoriously New York in the recently enacted
statute) forbid compensation to the owner for any animal killed because
it is affected with a contagious disease, and to prevent the extension
of such contagion. All history attests, and any consideration of human
nature might teach, that such a measure is only calculated to spread the
infection. The owner of an animal, affected with a contagious disease,
who can get little salvage by turning it into beef, and none at all if
he hands it over to the State for slaughter, will naturally think of
putting it on the market, where he can secure a good price. How much
more is he tempted to do this when the disease is an occult one, and the
animal shows the outward appearance of health, as is the case in
nine-tenths of many tuberculous herds! Crime cannot be fixed on the
seller, for he is not an expert, and cannot be expected to diagnose the
disease. If the infected cow is of little value for the dairy, she is
passed on, from hand to hand, leaving infection in every herd she has
entered. The ultimate owner (in whose hands the State finds her and
diagnoses her disease), though he may have bought her in good faith as a
sound animal and paid a correspondingly high market price, is made to
lose the whole value of the cow. The real offender who knew her to be a
tuberculous animal, and sold her in consequence at the price of a sound
cow is shrewd enough to keep himself out of the clutches of the law,
while the honest purchaser who has been already swindled, has his income
and property cut off without compensation. Such a law is self-evidently
unjust; it plays into the hands of the swindler at the expense of the
just man; with the object of protecting the community against infection,
it refuses to call on the public for any contribution toward its own
protection. The system is a direct bid for extensive and encreasing
violation of the law and diffusion of the infection and must be accorded
a prominent place in the list of causes. It would be surprising to find
that any country ever extirpated an animal plague by working on such a
system. As a matter of fact no country ever did; all such sanitary
successes from the extinction of sheeppox or rinderpest in Western
Europe, to the recent _stamping out_ of lung plague in the United
States, were based on a just compensation to the owners of the stock.
When, therefore, veterinary sanitary principles and experience have been
so far ignored as to allow the passage of a law, which at once favors
the diffusion of infection by the crafty sale of the infected, the
expatriation of the healthy animals from the home herds, leaving only
the diseased, and finally the selection from herds in transit of the
tuberculous ones to be scattered widely among the herds of the State, we
must not wonder at the continuance or encrease of tuberculosis in the
commonwealth. Until a more rational and common sense legislation can be
secured, the unfortunate stock owner must defend himself by the
expensive alternative of testing every animal he buys.
_Private Testing of Herds and Sale of the Tuberculous._ A most
reprehensible practice is the private testing of herds and the sale as
store animals of those that react. In this way a herd may be cleared of
infection, but at tenfold expense to the public at large, as every
animal sold may convey the infection into a separate herd. It is,
however, a natural outcome of the unwise system of refusing indemnity
for the infected.
_Habituating to Tuberculin Testing and then Selling under Test._ Many
(not all) cattle, when injected with tuberculin repeatedly at short
intervals, acquire a tolerance of the agent and fail to react as at the
first test. We have in such cases examined the animals _post mortem_ and
found active tuberculosis. Unscrupulous owners, aware of the fact, have
their diseased cattle injected repeatedly every few weeks, and as soon
as they fail to respond, sell them under the guarantee of the tuberculin
test. The cattle, of course, carry the infection into other herds. This
swindle could be obviated if it could be made a misdemeanor to have or
use tuberculin except as a State or Federal official acting for the
government. This would imply the corollary that the State should test
the herds when called upon.
_Antipyretics During Tuberculin Test._ Another method of undoing the
tuberculin test is to feed large doses of antithermic agents to depress
the temperature at the time the rise from tuberculin would take place.
Tuberculous cattle may thus be sold as sound animals, with a certificate
of having successfully passed the tuberculin test, the operator having
given such certificate in perfect good faith. It suggests the importance
of withholding tuberculin from public use, or of securing an absolute
control of the feeding and watering of the animals during the test.
_False Certificates of Tuberculin Tests._ Stock owners have reported to
the writer alleged tuberculin tests of their herds which were completed
in three hours, and others have named instances of marking animals for
shipment and giving certificates of testing where no tuberculin had been
used and no examination beyond the most cursory glance had been made.
This might be expected of some non-graduates, registered on a basis of
alleged practice, shamefully ignorant of veterinary medicine and
conscious of their false position, and some educated veterinarians thus
placed at a disadvantage may have been tempted to follow suit, but it
can only end in personal disgrace and an inevitable extension of
tuberculosis. Begotten in a legislative wrong and nourished by moral
weakness, it can only grow into greater evil. Unfortunately such
unworthy actions throw discredit on the very name of sanitary police. To
avoid the evil every one aspiring to the responsible work of testing
cattle should be thoroughly examined as to fitness and licensed to
practice under a heavy penalty for neglect or malpractice.
_Feeding Hogs on Fresh Offal from Abattoirs._ It has been a common
practice, especially in country districts, to turn the raw offal of
slaughterhouses to pigs, and as the tubercle is usually concentrated in
internal organs, the hogs become infected in large numbers. In public
institutions which slaughtered their own meat I have found the hogs all
but universally tuberculous. The danger is only slightly lessened when
the hogs are fed raw butcher and kitchen scraps in swill. It suggests
the compulsory boiling of all swill or garbage containing raw meat.
_Feeding Calves and Hogs on infected Milk._ Though it has been
repeatedly shown that the majority of moderately tuberculous cows do not
yield infected milk, yet in every tuberculous herd, at irregular
intervals, one or more are attacked with tuberculosis of the mammæ, and
the drinkers of the milk take in the tubercle bacilli. This will happen
in the most strictly supervised tuberculous herds, while in those that
are less carefully managed, the milk that is considered unfit for human
consumption is fed to pigs or calves. In one dairy, I found that the
calves, all fed in this way afterward reacted under the tuberculin test,
while the following year the crop of calves, though fed on the milk of
the same diseased cows, with this difference that the milk had been
first heated to 180° F., without exception grew up healthy, and not one
reacted under the tuberculin test.
_Feeding hogs after Tuberculous Cattle._ Where cattle and hogs are kept
on the same place, it is a common practice to let the swine clean up all
food left by the satiated cattle. If there are tuberculous cattle,
affected either in the air passages or alimentary tract, the pigs become
infected by taking in the expectoration by which the food is soiled, or
by rooting around where the cow manure has fallen.
_Feeding from a Common Trough._ In an infected herd, a common cause of
extension is found in the use by the whole herd of a common feeding
trough, in which the food soiled by virulent discharges, is taken by
healthy animals. The habit of tying a cow in different stalls in
succession as she happens to strike one, in place of keeping each cow by
its own stall is a fruitful source of infection. Even when each cow is
kept by its own stall, she often becomes infected by reaching into the
feeding trough in front of the next cow on the left or right and taking
in soiled and infected fodder. In swill stables the evil reaches its
maximum, as the feeding trough for 50 or 60 animals is slightly inclined
so that the liquid food runs from the supply end to the other, and
infecting expectorations are carried in front of all in turn.
_Dry, Dusty Stables._ Tubercle bacilli are not carried out on the
expired air, unless there is forced expulsion as in coughing, snorting
or sniffing. In such cases the solid particles are thrown off in masses
or fine spray and lodged on surrounding objects. These, together with
infecting discharges from bowels, urinary or generative organs, open
sores, etc., dry up, and rise on the dust, and, as sterilization occurs
slowly indoors, they cause more or less infection of the animal inmates.
Cornet, Tappenier and others have thoroughly established this as a
common form of transmission, and shown the great importance of
cleanliness, disinfection and the removal of infecting materials without
raising dust. In an establishment in Paris, a consumptive had served for
3 years. In the following 10 years, 15 of the 20 employés died of
phthisis.
_Extension through Vermin._ As rats and mice (and other rodents) are
susceptible to tuberculosis by ingestion (Galtier) it follows that they
may become the media for extension of the infection through fodder in
which their droppings are scattered, or from their feeding in the same
troughs as the cattle or swine. For swine in particular the danger is
greater because of their carnivorous habits; the rat acquires
tuberculosis through eating the offal of the abattoir, or the scraps of
the butcher’s stall, or kitchen, and the sick rat is thereafter easily
caught and devoured by the pig to its own undoing. To block this channel
of infection the destruction of vermin about slaughter houses, stables
and pig pens is a most important consideration.
_Flies and Other Insects as Carriers of Tuberculosis._ These
congregating on tubercular sores, around the nares or lips, on the skin
contaminated by the virulent bowel discharges, on dishes holding
infecting milk, on objects soiled by infecting discharges, on diseased
carcasses at abattoirs, rendering works and elsewhere, (Spillman,
Hoffmann, Lartigan, etc.,) and on graves where the earth worms have
brought the bacillus to the surface, (Lortet, etc.) become more or less
active agents in disseminating the virus. In this way food and water are
contaminated, and exceptionally, infection may even be implanted on
sores. As the excreta of the flies contain the virulent bacilli, the
latter are deposited on windows, walls, furniture, etc., and may be
later disseminated in the dust of the apartment.
Dewevre found tubercle bacilli in the bedbugs infesting a bed in which
successive cases of consumption had developed, showing that other
parasitic or rapacious insects besides flies must be looked on as
possible propagators of the bacilli. There is reason to suspect, lice,
fleas, ticks and acari especially. The same is true of leeches and other
rapacious invertebrates.