Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1898. MEAT, MILK, AND MORTALITY.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 156, 30 December 1898, Page 4

Evening Post. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1898. MEAT, MILK, AND MORTALITY.

The problems presented by the prevalence of tuberculosis in the human body, and in the various classes of stock, have for some years been making increasing calls upon public attention in all civilised lands. The resources of science, the powers of the law, and the moral suasion of education have all been impressed into service against the deadly disease. Science has done an immense amount towards tracing the history and progress of the disease under its different forms, and has pointed out curative measures that are capable of mitigating its ravages. Legislation upon matters sanitary, and in regulation of the conditions of life- and of the food supplied to the public, has also helped to check the dissemination of tuberculosis. The educative efforts of the medical profession, the press, and social reformers hare certainly roused the people generally to the importance of guarding against conditions that predispose to tuberculosis and risks that are likely to communicate contagion. Much, however, still remains to be accomplished in all three spheres — scientific, legislative, and educational — before mankind can be expected to gain the better of its insidious foe. Fortunately the world is awake to the need of grappling with the evil, and even though it is premature to expect the disease to be stamped out, there is good reason to hope that a distinct decrease in its effects can be accomplished by the combined efforts of the community. Attention has been drawn to the subject in London quite recently by Sir Richard Thorne Thome's "Harben Lectures"under the auspices of the Royal Institute of Public Health. Sir Richard Thorne is well known as the Chief Medi* cal Officer of the Local Government Board in the Old Country, and his valuable experience as a medical man and an administrator give a peculiar weigh,t to his utterances upon such a aubject aa the "Administrative Control of Tubercu*

losis." Reference from a colonial point of view was made to the same nrntter in the Presidential address delivered before the Queensland Royal Society by Mr. C. J. Pound, the Director of the Stock Institute in that colony. Mr. Pound's address has lately been published in pamphlet form under the title "The Stockowners' Indebtedness to the Microscope," and it contains much interesting information about other bacteriological diseases besides tuberculosis. Sir Richard Thorne approached the subject from the human standpoint, whereas Mr. Pound regarded it rather from the stockowners' point of view. Both, however, emphasised the necessity for precautionary measures, and the partial, if not complete, preventibility of the disease. Mr. Pound declares that " not only is tuberculosis the most common disease in mankind, but there is no other disease in existence which attacks so many different kinds of animals ; not one of our domestic animals is completely refractory to it ; they simply vary in their degree of susceptibility." As a matter of fact, it is this terrible übiquity of the disease, this ever-present liability to risk of contagion, that makes it, with our present knowledge and powers, practically impossible to eradicate tuberculosis, unless we adopt the brutally drastic procedure of eliminate ing by segregation ot otherwise, not only among all kinds of domesticated animals, but also among human beings. The extent of the injury inflicted upon our race by this fell disease may be gauged by the frfct that something like 40,000 lives are lost annually in England and Wales from pulmonary tuberculosis alone. Australia and New Zealand do not show quite such an appalling record, but the number of deaths from tuberculosis, whether of the lungs or under the common infantile form, " tubes mesenterica," is sufficiently large to warrant us in making strenuous efforts to check its advances. There ia a bright ray of hope after all in this dark picture, and under its light we may hope to dp much towards lessening the scourge. Although tuberculous disease is still cruelly prevalent, it is certain that since statistics have been collected it has been on the decrease. The decrease is almost entirely due, in the human subject, to a reduction in .the rate of death from pulmonary phthisis or tubercular lung disease. Children seem to be still as liable aa ever to tubercular affections, especially those of the mesentery and digestive organs. The causes of the decrease of the pulmonary type among adults are act down by Sir Richard Thome to "social and moral influences, better housing, better food, warmer clothing, and improved conditions of labour," as well as to the hygienic reforms accomplished by the State through the local authorities. He pointed out that in districts inhabited chiefly by the- poor, building regulations and the provision of open spaces had provided an amount of life and air unknown in former years, and with reference to the obstruction experienced by progressive local authorities, urged that the best way to overcome it was to educate the public. So far, therefore, it would appear that tuberculosis has been checked by creating physical conditions calculated to enable the human frame to resist the attacks of the insidious microbes. The importance of this work cannot be exaggerated, and a consideration of the ills wrought by those scarcely visible foes of mankind should spur the legislator and the municipal reformer to yet more strenuous exertions. The pulmonary forms of tubercular disease are generally acquired by breathing air impregnated with the germs, but the form so frequent amongst children is almost certainly disseminated by the ingestion of diseased milk. Milk and meat are also responsible for most, if not all, of the tuberculosis other than pulmonary that attacks adults. Sir Richard Thorne pointedly remarked that we British people are the only civilised nation that habitually consumes raw milk, and he urged the boiling or sterilising of all milk used as food. The necessity for this precaution has been frequently maintained in these columns; and The Times, in an article on Sir Richard Thome's lectures, tells its readers that "milk, however many tubercle bacilli it may contain, may be rendered an ' absolutely safe article of food by being raised to the temperature of boiling water, or even to something less than this — to about 155deg. Fahrenheit — and suffered to cool y while if the cooling be gradual and complete — that is, if the milk received and heated in the morning be not used until evening, and so on—the flavour is scarcely at all affected by the process." "There is here," claims our London contemporary, " perfect security, if consumers can but be induced to avail themselves of it ; and so to induce them must be a matter of education and of medical persuasion." It is worth noting in connection with this subjeot that the milk of the human mother is not liable to communicate tuberculosis, and that maternal feeding is less likely to lead to infantile mortality than artificial feeding. With regard to the meat question, Sir Riohard Thorne advised that "the authorities should be much strioter in the direction of preventing the sale of any meat subjected to tubercular influence." He recommended the abolition of all private slaughterhouses ; the establishment of public slaughterhouses, subject to direct local control ; and the creation of a clasp of skilled meat inspectors. These are the lines along which this journal has long contended that progress should be made. At the same time much can be done by a judicious and regular inspection of stock, Avitb destruction of dangerously-affected animals and the segregation of those not other' wise observable as diseased, but reacting to the tuberculin test. About the value of this test and the good that may result from inspection much information is to be found in Mr. Pound's pamphlet, and the subject has on many occasions been discussed in these columns.