Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1894-07-26

The experiment station at the Uni
| yerSity of Wisconsin has just issued
bulletin No. 40 entitled tuberculosis
and the Tuberculin Test This bulle-
! tin can not but be of great interest
to the people of our state. Our readers
Will recall that couple of years ago
the announcement was made that
remedy had been discovered for tuber-
cular consumption. Most unfortunately
this statement was premature. a dis
! covery of much Importance had been
made, however, in what is known as
tuberculin lymph, by great German
! scientist, named Koch 1t was first
thought that when this lymph was in
| Jected into the blood of an individual
suffering with tubercular consumption.
the lymph would in some way search
out the germs of consumption and de-
stroying them would put the patient
il position of returning to health. While
! this much desired result was not ac-
complished this lymph does act upon
| the germs of consumption in such n
| way as to set up temporary fever.
| If the lymph is I'M ected into the blood
OF one who does not have the germs of
consumption in his body then there is
no fever the temperature of the person
! thus inoculated remaining normal.
| This true, tubercular lymph offers a
means Of determining whether or not
animals or individuals are suffering
from tubercular consumption long be-
fore it can otherwise be determined.
| For long time past outbreaks Of
tubercular consumption have been
noted in dairy herds. Sometimes the
disease has been SO bad as to carry off
practically every COW III the herd thus
destroying the source of support with
the dairyman.
Now TO the bulletin and what it tells
us. Bulletin No. 40 numbers AZ pages
and was written by DR. III. l.. Russell,
| bacteriolOgiSt Of the experiment sta
ton. Last spring Dr. Russell, together
with DR.. Clark the veterinarian ut
the agricultural college. concluded to
try the Koch lymph on the university
dairy herd to see if these animals were
infected with tubercu.ar consumption,
| One animal had run down rapidly as
though affected with quick consump-
ton and this excited suspicion. The
| individual members of the herd were
tested with the tubcrculin lymph pro-
cured from the laboratory Of Koch i'll
| Germany, and also that sent out by
! the departmen of agriculture at Wash
| ington. The temperature of the an
imals 50 tested was carefully noted
for "a hours before applying the lymph
| and for ~ hours after the incubation.
! 70 the surprise of all, twenty-five ami
mails, Jersey bull, a Jersey cow, both
! full blooded, two ShorthornS, several
HolsteinS, an Ayrshire. together with
| grades of the several breeds, making
| twenty-five animals in all, ranging
from calves up, responded to the test
! by showing fever. The next question
was what should be done. Was the
test correct, or not? Most of these an
imals carried a considerable amount of
flesh some of them being quite fat and
no one had ever thought of the pres
! ence of the dread disease having
| hold of them. Was it possible that the
koch's test had made mistake i'll
these cases? one by one the animals
were killed and careful .postmortem
examinations made. In every case
where there had been rise in TEN
perature ON application of the lymph,
the seeds of consumption were found
somwhere in the animals body.
Three animals were killed which did
not respond by the rise in temperature,
and one of these was found slightly
affected. Thus the lymph failed to
point out the disease in one case. Per
haps this was owing to the small
amount of lymph used in some of the
| NEGOTIATIONS.
This experiment was u costly one
for the university, but when we CON
slider the dangers from tubercular
troubles in our dairy cattle In this
great dairy state the loss becomes in
significant compared with the possible
good,
About 1900 copies of bulletin No.
40 describing this test have been is
sued. We are informed that copy of
this bulletin will be sent to every ply
stefan in the state whose name can
be obtained by the experiment station
ANY one interested IN this subject and
desiring the bulletin can doubtless Sc
cure copy by addressing the agri-
cultural experiment station at Madison
Applications should be sent in early as
no doubt the call for the bulletin will
be very great.