Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/237

Rh the diseased body of an alien species—man, for example—tends to discredit the experimental transmutations referred to.

Bovine tubercle bacilli are characterized, as ascertained by Smith, by a greater degree of pathogenic power for mammals in general than human bacilli, with which fact is correlated certain peculiarities of cultural and physiological properties serving further to separate the bovine from the human bacilli. The bacilli of mammalian origin are, perhaps, closely related and less removed from each other by the sum of their properties than they are from the avian bacillus. With the few exceptions mentioned all forms of mammalian tuberculosis are caused by either the human or the bovine bacillus.

In view of the general fact that the bovine bacilli show a greater degree of pathogenic action for the lower mammals than the human bacilli, it was natural to assume that bovine bacilli would be powerfully pathogenic for man also. To test this probability directly by experiment is, of course, not permissible. But the belief that tuberculosis in cattle is a menace to man is expressed in the many regulations by which it is aimed to control and prevent the use as food of products derived from tuberculous animals. It was not until Koch's address was delivered in 1901 that any serious doubt existed in the minds of sanitarians and pathologists that tuberculous cattle offered a source of danger to man. The specific knowledge which has accumulated since that date has served to establish the transmissibility in some degree of bovine tuberculosis to the human subject. The inherent difficulty and tediousness of the investigation of the specific types of tubercle bacilli existing in human cases of tuberculosis necessarily limit the total number of instances in which it has been established, beyond peradventure, that the bovine type of bacillus does occur in tuberculous processes in man. In this country the responsibility of refuting the too general statement of Koch has fallen chiefly upon Ravenel and Theobald Smith, whose admirable studies in this direction are of a convincing nature.

If we pause for a moment to consider upon what data Koch based his statement of the independence and non-communicability of tuberculosis in cattle and man, we shall appreciate that, in so far as he dealt with established fact and not hypothesis, he had long been anticipated. That cattle are highly resistant to infection with tuberculous material and tubercle cultures obtained from human subjects can be concluded from the early experiments of Baumgarten, Sidney Martin, Frothingham and Dinwiddie. The most conclusive evidence upon this subject is contained in Theobald Smith's paper of 1898. in which he summarizes his experiments by stating that "putting all the facts obtained by experiments on cattle together, it would seem as though the sputum bacillus can not gain lodgment in cattle through the ordinary channels."