COWS AND CONSUMPTION

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 13, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 40.

COWS AND CONSUMPTION.

THERE can be no doubt that the use of cows' flesh and of unsterilized cow's milk is one of the most widely active causes of consumption, and one which has been very aptly designated "the great winter plague of civilization." This fact has been known to the medical profession for many years, and yet no very radical measures have been taken with reference to the suppression of this cause of disease, which is accountable annually for many times more deaths than cholera or any other of the epidemic diseases.

Beefsteak is consumed in greater quantities than ever, owing to its present cheapness, and cows' milk is swallowed at all times, and at all places, without the slightest inquiry into its antecedents, and without the application of any means for the destruction of mischievous microbes which the lacteal fluid may contain. Dr. E. F. Brusch calls the cow "the wet nurse of consumption," and makes the following interesting observations concerning the relation of cows to this dread disease:—

"Scrofulous females in the human race usually secrete an abundance of milk, because in scrofula there is an unusual tendency to glandular enlargement and activity. As the mammary is the highest type of glandular structure, it is stimulated to increased action. A scrofulous cow is usually the largest milker, and the closest kind of consanguinity has been practiced by cattle breeders, with the object of producing a scrofulous animal, not because she is scrofulous, but because the particular form she represents are the largest yielders of milk. We find, too, that consanguineous breeding has been alleged as one of the causes of tuberculosis in the human race, where it never can be conducted with so close and intimate blood relatives as in the dairy animals."

"The absence of phthisis in high, dry, mountainous regions has been accounted for

by reason of the altitude and absence of moisture in the atmosphere; but here occurs a somewhat curious fact, namely, that the cow does not thrive in high, dry, mountainous districts; but in the low, swampy, moist region, where the succulent and lush grasses grow, is the place where the cow flourishes, and it is in these regions, also, that tuberculosis abounds in both the bovine and human subjects."—Annals of Hygiene.