PRECAUTIONS AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS.
At the Congress for the Study of Tuberculosis, held in Paris last year, a commission was appointed to report a series of simple and practical rules for prophylaxis. The commission consisted of MM. Chauveau (president), Bartel, Cornil, Grancher, Landonzy, Lannelongue, Legroux, Leblanc, Nocard, Rossignol, Verneuil, Petit, and Villemin, who presented the report. This had been reviewed, and its conclusions approved by MM. Bouchard, Brouardel, Potain, and Proust. It will thus be seen that the instructions come with the sanction of the highest authority in France. The following abstract gives the essential points contained in the report, presented to the Academy of Medicine, on July 30:— Adverting to the fact that more than one-fourth of the deaths in Paris were due to tubercular disease, not pulmonary affections alone, tuberculosis was pronounced a parasitic malady, virulent, contagious, transmissible, caused by Koch's bacillus, which enters the body by the digestive canal with the food, by the respiratory tract with the inspired air, by the skin and mucosa through various solutions of continuity. Certain maladies and constitutional states predispose the individual to tuberculosis. The parasite is to be found in the milk, the muscles, and the blood of animals which serve as food for man. The use of meat, raw or slightly cooked, and blood, which can contain the living germ of tuberculosis, should be prohibited as food. Milk should only be used after being boiled. The tuberculous mother should not nurse her child, which should be brought up by a healthy wet-nurse in the country. If milk be used as the infant's food, that of the ass or the goat is to be preferred. A rigorous inspection of animals slaughtered for food should be enforced. The only absolutely certain means of avoiding the danger of meat from tuberculous animals, is to submit it to such thorough cooking as will affect the interior of the piece as well as the surface.—Times and Register.