HIDDEN DISEASE IN FLESH MEAT.
FLESH eaters never know what they are eating. Apparently healthy animals may be infected with deadly disease. The following dispatch well illustrates the subtle nature of diseases that make flesh eating extremely dangerous:— "NEW YORK, January 3.—Almost a score of lives will be taken at Ex-Vice President Morton's country place at Rhine Cliff a week from to-day. They will be sacrificed in cold blood, in accord with the law of the State, and for the good of mankind. Seventeen of the finest of Mr. Morton's noble herd of Guernsey cattle, will be murdered. They are suffering with tuberculosis, and the State Board of Health has ordered that they be killed. This will leave but forty-eight of the famous herd, but they, however, are absolutely free from disease or defect. "Since the foundation of Mr. Morton's herd was laid in 1887, by the importation of fifty-nine head of cattle, selected on the island of Guernsey, it has been customary to have all the cattle examined every two months by a Poughkeepsie expert. Three weeks ago Dr. Faust examined the whole herd, and, acting under instructions from Mr. Morton, looked carefully for symptoms of tuberculosis. He exhausted all the ordinary tests, and reported all the cattle free from disease. "Mr. Morton, however, in order to make no mistake, asked Dr. Faust to try Dr. Koch's test. This consists in a hypodermic injection of tuberculous matter. This week Dr. Faust again visited Ellerslie. He injected the fluid behind the right shoulder of every one of186the herd. Then he spent ten hours watching them carefully. "If the germs of tuberculosis have entered the system of the cow, the tuberculous matter causes high fever, lasting for five or six hours after the injection. Then the fever subsides and the cow's condition becomes as it was before. Seventeen of the herd developed fever. The animals will be killed. "It is only recently that the Koch test has been applied to cattle. It has worked wonders in other herds than that of Mr. Morton. A number of cattle breeders of this State who sent herds of blooded cattle to the World's Fair have had the test applied to their herds recently. The result has been that over one hundred of the cattle that were praised and prized at the World's Fair have been killed."