ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION­ANNUAL MEETING, BIRMINGHAM, JULY 1890.

(Section of Public Medicine),

MEAT INSPECTION.

PROFESSOR WALLEY (Royal Veterinary College, Edinburgh) read a paper on Meat Inspection. He said that the subject of meat inspection might be con­sidered under three heads: 1. The necessity for the adoption of a system of meat inspection in this country; 2. The best method of carrying out meat inspection; 3. The principles that should guide us in the condemnation of meat. I. Meat inspection was necessary for the reasons (a) that the British were the greatest of flesh eaters in the world; (b) that the vast majority of the flesh-eating portion of the public were utterly ignorant as to the characters which distinguished good from bad meat; (c) that through the medium of animal flesh many lives have been lost, and many people had suffered injury to their health; and (d) that the flesh ~aters had a right to protection from such dangers, and from the evil designs of those who profit by the trade in bad meat, and also by the fact that there was no law to compel them to declare from what source the flesh they sold had been obtained, nor to declare the nature of the disease from which an animal had suffered. 2. In order that meat inspection should be properly carried out three things were necessary (a) that all animals intended for human food should be examined, prior to slaughter, by competent persons; (b) that not only the carcases but the viscera of all animals intended for food should also be examined; (c) that those persons whose duty it was to carry out such inspection should possess the necessary knowledge of their work to enable them to discharge the duties devolving upon them in an efficient manner. Inspection of all animals prior to slaughter could not be carried out in all cases, for example, in those instances in which as the result of accidents it was found necessary to slaughter animals in places other than abattoirs, and also in the case of dead meat from foreign countries; but where animals were killed on account of injuries or sudden illness, the internal organs should be sent to a licensed abattoir or receiving house with the carcase, for inspection and as a guide to the inspector in his work; further, all private slaughterhouses should be abolished, or where, as in small villages or towns, a public slaughterhouse could not be supported, they should be licensed and placed under the direct control of the sanitary authorities. He held that in all abattoirs there should be one or more lay inspectors, but they should not be empowered to condemn flesh; for this purpose a sanitary board (consisting of a medical officer, a veterinary officer, and a lay inspector) should be established in connection with every abattoir; but inspectors (lay or professional) should only be appointed after submitting themselves to examination by a competent examining body, and the decision of the sanitary board should be final. The microscope should be brought into requisition in dealing with the flesh of animals that had suffered from micro-parasitic disease. 3. Flesh should be considered unfit for food if its physical characters presented gross departures from the normal, as from its being excessively lean or an::emic, or soft, or moist, or dark in colour; or in which effusions, or extravasations, or evidences of commencing decomposition were detected; or from which an unnatural odour was given off, or which possessed a distinctly abnormal taste. Flesh should be considered unfit for food when the animal from which it was derived had been physicked to any extent, or had suffered from such maladies as pycemia, septic::emia, glanders, farcy, rabies or anthrax; or from any malady from the effects of which important nutritive changes have taken place, or in which there was a probability of the malady being transmitted to the human subject by ingestion.

ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

The question of the condemnation of the flesh of parturient animals and of those that had suffered from specific fevers, such as swine fever, pleuro-pneu­monia, foot-and-mouth disease, or tuberculosis; or from such hcemal lesions as black quarter, was one for the grave consideration of the members of the Association and of all sanitarians.

Professor M'FADYEAN said that skilled inspection should devolve upon veterinary surgeons. That would be necessary even if inspection consisted simply in putting aside the flesh of every animal that was not absolutely healthy. But, as everyone knew, structural alterations might be present in some part of an animal without rendering its flesh at all dangerous, and only a skilled inspector was capable of judging between such cases, and those in which the flesh could not with safety be used for human food. He thought that tuberculosis in cattle was not of prime importance from a public health point of view (in man the primary lesion was seldom in the ali­mentary canal), and he thought that only such cases of human tuberculosis as had their starting point in connection with the alimentary organs could possibly have been brought about by the consumption of tuberculous meat or milk.

Mr MEYRICK said meat inspection should be carried out by medical or veterinary inspectors. Meat from animals suffering from parturient apoplexy could, he believed, be eaten with impunity, and so also could that in the early stage of pleuro-pneumonia. Tuberculous meat ought to be condemned.

Dr GEO. WILSON said that the public should not be allowed to run any risks by eating meat from diseased carcases. Meat exposed for sale should be regarded as presented to the public as sound meat from healthy animals, and if found otherwise should be condemned.

Mr HUNTING said it was impossible to inspect all meat. The large towns got all the worst meat. The best remedy was to establish public abattoirs, and abolish private ones. The inspectors should be butchers (laymen); they could detect all ordinary cases of unsound meat in the slaughterhouses.

Dr MASON (Hull) thought that an expert veterinary pathologist should be the meat inspector. Tuberculosis was very rare in sheep, but very common in cattle around Hull. In 1883 the corporation of Hull took action in the matter, and proposed compensation to owners of condemned beasts. Auctioneers who sold diseased cattle in Hull were liable to be suspended.

Dr SERGEANT concurred in thinking public abattoirs only should be used in towns. Inspection of meat in private slaughterhouses was almost impossible; in many cases animals were slaughtered outside the town, when meat inspec­tion was efficiently carried out, the carcases being" stripped" before entering the town. He regarded tuberculosis in meat as very important. In all advanced cases of the disease the meat should not be used as food, whatever views were taken as to the early stages of the disease. Tuberculous milk was even more important than tubercular meat. The conditions of most cowsheds were very insanitary.

Dr FOSBROKE said that local authorities should have more power to close private slaughterhouses; if that were not done, public abattoirs were not of much use.

Mr KETTLE (Market Drayton) maintained that the erection of public abattoirs in large cities only would not suffice to remove the present danger. A great many diseased animals were slaughtered in remote country districts and sent in to Birmingham and other large cities.

Dr A. HILL remarked on the fact that although more meat was eaten and milk drunk, and more tuberculosis existed in cattle, still the death rates from tabes mesenteric a and pulmonary phthisis were being gradually lowered. Professor ·Walley brought forward no evidence to show that human disease had been produced by ingestion of meat from slightly tuberculous cows. Healthy­looking animals could be taken as being healthy for human food.

ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

RESOLUTION.

The following resolution was proposed by Dr W. RUSSELL (Edinburgh), seconded by Dr E. SERGEANT, and adopted: "That it be remitted to the Parliamentary Bills Committee to approach the Government with a view to obtain the abolition of private and the establishment of public slaughterhouses, with skilled inspection of meat."

(Section 0./ PatllOlogy)

COMPARATIVE PATHOLOGY OF TUBERCULOSIS.

Professor M'FADYEAN re'ad a paper on this subject in the Pathological Section. Referring, in the first place, to the species susceptible to tuberculosis, he said that the human and the bovine species furnished the chief natural soil for the growth and propagation of Koch's bacillus. As striking as the susceptibility of these species, \las the apparent immunity of the sheep. No authentic case of tuberculosis in the latter species had been recorded in Great Britain, but it was doubtful how much of this immunity was due to insuscepti­bility or power of resistance towards the bacillus, and how much to the fact that in this country the sheep was seldom housed, and lived more in a state of nature than any of the other domesticated animals. While there was a resemblance between the human and the bovine species in that each furnished a large proportion of the victims of tuberculosis, a remarkable difference between the two species was observable in respect of the age at which the susceptibility appeared to be greatest; for while In human beings an immense majority of the cases of tu berculosis occurred in persons under or about the age of puberty, in cattle the disease was vastly more frequent among adult animals, and exceedingly rare in what corresponded to the period of infancy. This apparent increase of susceptibility with advancing age in cattle might be due mainly to the fact that young cattle led a more natural existence, and were more frequently kept out of doors, than older animals.

When attention was turned to the distribution of the tubercular lesions in different species many interesting differences were noticeable. In the human species the lungs were much more commonly the primary seat of the disease than in any of the other species. Next to man in this respect came the ox, but in the latter animal a considerable proportion of cases were due to primary infection of the alimentary tract or its associated glands. A very remarkable and as yet unexplained fact was the almost constant localisation of the primary lesions to the alimentary tract in equine tuberculosis. That this was not due to any unsuitability of the pulmonary tissue as a soil for the bacillus, was proved by the fact that the lungs were almost constantly affected secondarily at a later stage of the disease. A larger proportion of cases affecting the reproductive organs was furnished by the bovine than by the human species, and the former of these species appeared to be the only one in which the mammary gland was a frequent seat of tuberculous lesions.

A study of the histology of tuberculous lesions showed that these were by no means uniform in all species. The discrete miliary tubercle had been most correctly described by Baumgarten. In its earliest stage it was composed of epithelioid cells derived from the epithelial, endothelial, or fixed connective tissue cells of the part. The liver of the horse occasionally formed an excellent organ in which to study such commencing tubercles, and there the ephithelioid cells were partly if not mainly descendants of liver cells. The second element in the miliary tubercle was the small round cell. These were simply migrated leucocytes, which invaded the young tubercle from its peri­phery. The third element was the giant-cell. This element was most abundant in the miliary tubercles of the horse and the ox. The giant cells were

ABSTRACTS AND REPORTS.

usually multiple in each tubercle in its later stages, and their position was quite irregular. The description given in some text-books of human pathology--to the effect that each tubercle had a centrally placed branched giant-ceIl-did not apply to the tubercle of the domesticated animals. In these species the giant-cells were seldom or never distinctly branched, and the only stroma recognisable in a miliary tubercle was a remnant of the tissue in which the tubercle had formed. In the horse and ox giant-cells appeared to be formed in most cases by fusion of the smaller cells of the tubercle.

It was very important to recognise that many common tubercular lesions of the lower animals were never" tubercular" in the literal or anatomical sense of the word, but had rather the form of a diffuse new growth simulating a neoplasm (tuberculosis of the serous membranes of cattle), or of a diffuse destructive infiltration (mammary tuberculosis in the cow). These diffuse lesions contained epithelioid, round, and giant-cells, like the discrete miliary tubercle, but they also frequently contained blood-vessels, many of which were newly formed. The early stage of perlsltcld nodules (on the capsule of the liver) showed numerous capillary loops, and recalled the structure of a wound granulation.

The bacillus of tuberculosis exhibited slight differences of size in different species, and notable differences as regards its abundance. In this respect the horse stood at the head of the list, the bacilli being usually very numerous in the giant and other cells. This abundance of the bacilli caused tubercular lesions of the horse to simulate leprosy. Bacilli were also usually numerous in tuber­cular lesions of the ox, but both in that species and the pig (and even in the horse occasionally) the bacilli were sometimes so sparsely present that many sections might have to be examined before a single rod could be found.

In conjunction with the paper a microscopic demonstration was given illustrating the histology of tubercular lesions in the ox, horse, pig, cat, and fowl, and the distribution and relative abundance of the bacilli in the tuber­cular lesions in these species.

CONTAGIOUS DISEASES (ANIMALS PLEURO­

PNEUMONIA) ACT, 1890.

GENERAL PROCEDURE UNDER THE AC~

THE following is the draft of the rules of general procedure under this Act, which has been prepared by the Board of Agriculture :-

r. Upon the outbreak of disease the owner must give notice of the disease to a police constable.

2. The constable will give information to an inspector of the local authority, who thereupon will at once visit the place, and also report to the local authority.

3. If it appeors to the inspector of the local authority that pleuro-pneumonia exists, or has within fifty-six days existed, he is to make and sign a declaration to that effect, and to serve notice upon the occupier, whereupon the place becomes provisionally an infected place. This carries with it an infected circle of half a mile.

4. The inspector of the local authority will then inform the local authority of his declaration and notice, and also inform the Board of Agriculture with the utmost promptitude, by telegraph if necessary.

5. Upon receipt of the intelligence the Board of Agriculture will imme­diately direct the slaughter of one of the diseased cattle under the supervision of a veterinary surgeon, who will arrange for the valuation, and will, after