TUBERCULOSIS AND FOOD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1037, 31 August 1911, Page 4

TUBERCULOSIS AND FOOD.

The presentation of the first report of the British Royal Commission on Tuberculosis constitutes an important event in the history both ot science and of public health. Eleven years ago the eminent German bacteriologist, Dr Koch, created a sensation by his assertion that the germs of tubercule in cattle and in human beings were essentially different, and that there was no need, therefore, for the customary precautions against tuberculosis infection from milk and meat. It was the validity of this pronouncement that the commission was specially charged to investigate, and it has done so by the most thorough practical research and experiment In its own laboratories, spread over nearly a decade. Its conclusions amount to a complete refutation of the thesis advanced by the German savant. It has been proved that certain cases of human tuberculosis are undoubtedly of the “ bovine ” type, and the bacillus of the disease in cattle is found especially in those cases where “consumption” in human beings has attacked the intestines. This points directly, of course, to tuberculosis food as a source of infection, and the verdict of the commissioners is clear and unhesitating “ that animals aud man can be reciprocally infected with this disease.” That most of the cases examined should have occurred in young children is a tact that lays speciel emphasis upon the responsibility of the milk supply, but it is evident that, in respect both of milk and meat, public authorities must not only enforce all existing safeguards, but concert measures for still closer supervision. One of the subsidiary inquiries conducted by the commission was directed to the origin of lupus, with the interesting result of ascertaining that the majority of such cases are due to a form ot tuberculous microbe that is of the “ bovine ” type, but differs from the organism usually found in cattle in its virulence for other animals. But the deepest impression made by the report will certainly be its dramatic overthrow of the assertion so dogmatically propounded by a scientific authority, and its vindication of the views consistently maintained by Lord Lister and the majority of British physiology tests.