It is of historical interest to note that these experiments were being conducted by Tappeiner three years before Robert Koch made the now classical announcement to the scientific world that he had succeeded in identifying, isolating, and in cultivating outside the human body the specific cause of consumption in the shape of the now familiar _bacillus tuberculosis_. The opinion expressed by Koch at the Congress on Tuberculosis recently held in London, that human and bovine tuberculosis are distinct diseases, is still the subject of contention and experimental investigation. Even if the opinion of this great authority is correct, and in this connection it is interesting to note that already in 1896 this opinion was brought forward by Smith in the _Medical Record_ at a time when Koch was maintaining the _identity_ of human and bovine tuberculosis--granted that Koch is correct, it should not, as so many fear, cause any relaxation in the efforts which have been at last made to safeguard our dairy produce by reasonable hygienic precautions; for even if tuberculosis is not transmissible from the cow to man, we know that in the hygienic supervision of our dairy industry we place a great barrier between us and the _bacillus tuberculosis_ and those numerous other disease germs which can and do gain access to milk from the _personnel_ of a dairy and so spread infection. With the alarming prevalence of consumption is it not justifiable to regard as certain that a definite proportion of the people engaged in milking, for example, are consumptive? And knowing, as we now do, how such persons can give off the germs of the disease in the simple act of speaking, the contamination of our milk with human tubercle bacilli must be regarded almost as a certainty. Would it not be reasonable that a code of simple precautions to be taken, coupled with a few of the more cogent facts concerning consumption and its distribution, should be drawn up and circulated amongst all engaged in the dairy industry? The National Health Society has done much for the prevention of disease by disseminating, through leaflets and lectures, simple facts concerning health and its preservation; might it not make itself the vehicle for the transmission of some such code which, whilst instructing, should impress upon its readers the responsibility which rests upon each and every individual member of society, by his or her own personal efforts, to assist in the great task of combating disease? A fact which urgently needs the widest recognition is the possible dissemination of disease germs by individuals not themselves suffering from the disease in question, but who have resided in the immediate surroundings of infected persons.