CHAPTER XIII
Medical Voodoo and the PUBLIC HEALTH
On the floor of the Annual Convention of the American Medical Association held in Los Angeles in the summer of 1911, Dr. W. A. Evans, one-time Health Commissioner for the city of Chicago, gave out the following memorable statement:
As I see it, the wise thing for the medical profession to do, is to get right into and man every great health movement; man health departments, tuberculosis societies, child and infant welfare societies, housing societies, etc. The future of the profession depends on keeping matters so that when the public mind thinks of these things it automatically thinks of physicians, and not of sociologists or sanitary engineers. The profession cannot afford to have these places occupied by other than medical men.
This Convention pronouncement by the Chicago Health officer was later published in the Journal of the A. M. A., Sept. 16, 1911, and marks a distinct epoch in the history of official medicine in the United States. Just how wholeheartedly the Evans recommendations were received by his colleagues, and how thoroughly they have been carried out in the 24 years since they were offered at the Los Angeles Convention, is sufficiently attested by a survey of the Public Health Service throughout the country which reveals every branch of it completely manned and dominated by the exponents of "regular medicine."
Practitioners of the newer schools of healing, such as Homeopathy, Osteopathy, Naturopathy, and Chiropractic are entirely excluded from such tax-supported institutions as health-boards, public hospitals, army camps, state prisons, workmen's compensation bureaus, and homes or asylums of every kind where the care of the sick is indicated. Here and there it may happen—as it has occasionally happened—that one of these public hospitals will let down the bars to one or other of the irregular healing "cults"—as a large impressive gesture of "liberalism"—yet on such galling terms of discrimination that the self-respecting cultist is glad to withdraw. A concession very generally made to the Christian Science practitioners—after their "cult" became sufficiently numerous to be reckoned with as a factor in politics—was to admit them as spiritual advisers to any of the medically controlled hospitals, much as priests and chaplains are admitted; but in no sense is the Christian Science practitioner permitted to take charge of a hospital case, dismiss the medical regimen and inaugurate his own therapeutic method.
The expressions in the above cited Evans resolution—that "the future of his profession depended" on getting the whip-hand in Public Health Service, and that "the profession could not afford" to forego the political advantage accruing from such monopoly—will be interpreted by some as a virtual confession on the part of regular medicine that it either realized it had nothing of therapeutic value to offer the sick world, or that it had despaired of winning the sick patronage by fair means and must therefore have recourse to political intrigue.
However it may be interpreted, here we have the recorded evidence of a deliberate plan by organized official medicine, openly declared in convention assembled, to monopolize a great public agency like the Public Health Service—affecting all the people and paid for by all the people—to the utter exclusion of other healing sects legalized under existing laws.
The effect of the adoption and vigorous prosecution of this Evans resolution, has been inevitably greatly to enhance the political power of organized regular medicine—whose official name is the American Medical Association—and to enable the "regulars" to hamper, harass, and where possible to suppress their therapeutic rivals—in other words destroy therapeutic competition. Yet stifling or destroying competition in any given business is precisely what the Sherman Anti-Trust law was designed to prevent, and thus the A. M. A. in carrying out the Evans program has taken on all the offensive features and oppressive overlordism of a swollen commercial "trust," and should be subject to the operation of the Anti-Trust law, but it isn't. For if monopoly is a bad thing when applied to the interchange of material commodities, how much greater menace to life and liberty it is when it restricts the free play of remedial agencies for the relief of human suffering, and the saving of human lives.
Yet in all the political fulminations—in and out of Congress—against the trusts—"great combinations in restraint of trade"—no whisper of criticism is ever heard against the most colossal of all monopolies, the most relentless pursuer of competitors, and the closest of all "close corporations"—the American Medical Association. A partial exception to this is noted in a resolution introduced into Congress in 1928 by Senator Glass of Virginia, for an appropriation to investigate one of the Medical Trust's activities—the tuberculin testing of dairy cattle. The Glass resolution was based on a personal rencontre with the State veterinaries on his own premises by the Virginia Senator, who when not occupied with affairs of State at Washington, amuses himself with a dairy farm of thorough-breds near Lynchburg, Va.
The resolution, with the report of the incident on the Glass farm which led up to it, was presented to the Congress in April 1928, and was ordered to be printed as "Senate Document No. 85." It comprised an amazing story of official injustice, arrogance and insolence on the part of the Virginia Livestock Sanitary Board in connection with the tuberculin testing of two thoroughbred heifers in Senator Glass's herd, that reads more like a chapter from Russian annals under the old Czar, than anything that could possibly happen under a supposedly free government.
The Virginia senator's long legal battle with the medical autocrats on the State Board—extending over six years at a cost of $12,000 and resulting in a complete triumph for the owner of the mistreated heifers—is given in detail in "Senate Document No. 85." Other dairy-farmers and live-stock owners had suffered similar outrages in the past, and pocketed their losses in silence. Senator Glass was the first one with enough means and enough pluck to challenge the authority of the State veterinaries and put up a fight against the wanton destruction of dairy herds at the behest of state-sponsored medicine. His course was amply vindicated in Virginia, for he not only won his court battle against the State Livestock Board, but the Virginia Legislature upon petition of other exasperated dairy men and livestock complainants, abolished this board and transferred its functions to the State Board of Agriculture. The offending State veterinarian whose obstinate, arbitrary conduct had caused all the trouble, was summarily dismissed and a new one appointed.
During the prosecution of the Glass case through the Virginia courts, there was brought into evidence and written into the file record the findings of an Illinois Legislative Committee, appointed in 1909 at the request of dissatisfied Illinois dairymen to investigate the whole subject of tuberculin testing, its scientific aspects and practical fruits, and report to the Legislature. This Committee, composed of four members of the upper house and six of the lower house of the Illinois Legislature, whose chairman was Judge E. D. Shurtleff of Chicago, extended its inquiry over a period of two years, during which time testimony was submitted by every class supposed to know anything about the milk industry—physicians, veterinarians, pathologists, bacteriologists, dairymen and health officials. Among the witnesses examined were such outstanding authorities as Dr. Austin Peters, head of the State Animal Bureau of Massachusetts; Dr. George Adami of Cambridge, England, and Montreal, Canada; Dr. James Law of Cornell University; Dr. Theobald Smith of Boston; Dr. Lawrence Flick of Philadelphia; Dr. Henry G. Piffard of New York City; Dr. Bernard Bang of Copenhagen, and Dr. James E. Egan, secretary of the Illinois State Board of Health. And it was the unanimous verdict of these expert witnesses that "the tuberculin testing of all dairy cows and the elimination of reactors is unnecessary, useless and wasteful"; and that "a proper and sufficient physical and clinical examination, and the elimination of those cows visibly affected in the udder or mammary glands, was quite enough."
When this was reported to the Illinois Legislature, it resulted in the enactment of a law overwhelmingly approved by the Legislature in 1911—(Chapt. 8, Sec. 105 Ill. Statutes)—which reads as follows:
An Act to prohibit the establishing and enforcing of the Tuberculin Test for Dairy Animals, by any city, village, incorporated town, county or other Corporate Authority in the State of Illinois.
This Illinois legislative investigation into the nature and operation of the Tuberculin Test for dairy animals, was the first, last, and only official inquiry into the matter ever ordered or undertaken in this country; and its ultimate effect—in the resultant prohibitory law—should have been of lasting benefit to the dairy industry, in protecting it from the assaults of medical voodooism operating through the police power of the State. Yet such was, and is, the tremendous political power of organized regular medicine in the United States, that the thorough, scientific work of this Illinois Legislative Committee—in 1909-1911—was completely nullified, and the benefits accruing from it to the dairy industry, not only in Illinois but in all the States, completely lost.
The first manifestation of this medico-political power in this instance, was the disappearance of the 11,000 copies of the Shurtleff Report which had caused the passage of the Act forbidding the tuberculin requirement. These valuable reports, containing the expert testimony of all the great veterinarians in the country, and published at considerable expense to the State, suddenly vanished from public view. No single copy could be found in any public library, nor among the files of State Law or Agricultural Colleges, until finally the American Medical Liberty League in Chicago was able to obtain a copy from a member of the original Shurtleff Investigating Committee, and published a number of reprints of this important official document in 1925.
Meantime the Illinois law prohibiting the compulsory test, had become virtually a dead letter, through the ceaseless agitation and bullying tactics of the medico-politico-bund, and in 1930, nearly twenty years after its passage, the law was repealed. The report of the Illinois Investigating Committee on which the law was based, however, still serves a useful purpose in educating the people as to the truth about tuberculin-testing, and it was useful to Senator Glass in his fight with the Public Health bureaucrats in Virginia. Since he incorporated its most salient features—and the expert testimony of the big medical authorities therein quoted—into his "Senate Document No. 85," which he later submitted to the Federal Congress, one can but wonder why this information failed to impress the solons at Washington as it had the civil authorities—the judges and legislators—of Virginia? Not only was the full history of the Carter Glass episode in re tuberculin-testing laid before his colleagues in the Senate—together with the complete vindication of his side of the contention by the Virginia courts and Legislature—but other data was deduced showing the graft and terrorism practiced by "the system" of state-sponsored medicine. An incident was cited in connection with the trial, of a professor of veterinary science in one of our largest universities, who was retained by Mr. Glass to act as expert adviser to his attorneys.
This professor had definitely expressed his opinion that "there have been many errors in making the intradermal test of cattle for tuberculosis," and had definitely cited instances in which "numerous valuable, pure-bred cattle had been condemned under this test when a stay in action was obtained and the retest made clear that the first test was inefficient." He had explicitly told Mr. Glass and his attorneys that "the records of New York State, where he resided, showed numbers of instances wherein reacting animals were retested and found without blemish, and their restoration to accredited herds even after they had been branded as reactors." "But," he added significantly, "I would like to see you or anybody else get access to those files." And the Glass attorneys realized the truth of this later when their efforts to see those files were stoutly resisted. This professor of veterinary science had definitely agreed to repeat his statements and opinion that "the tuberculin test was largely wrong, unreliable, and should be radically revised," in a sworn deposition for the Glass case and to prepare hypothetical questions for the opposition witnesses. A day or two before the time appointed to take his deposition, however, this eminent scientist in one of our famous universities, although paid a part of the fee charged for his professional services, evinced a reluctance to proceed. He said he had been "warned to have nothing to do with this case." He did not modify his previously expressed opinions in the slightest. There was no change in his professional attitude, but he showed plainly that he was frightened, and he advised an adjustment of the case out of court. When told by Mr. Glass's attorneys that the only adjustment out of court they would consent to would be a retest of the two condemned heifers, he expressed confidence in his ability to bring this about, and to have the retest made by two impartial veterinarians of acknowledged skill—one to be appointed by Dr. Mohler of the U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry, and the other by Dr. Munn, State Veterinarian of Penna.
He was told that while Mr. Glass had no compromise to propose, he would cheerfully agree to, and abide by, such a retest. The efforts of this distinguished veterinarian to bring about his proposed adjustment proved futile, however, to his manifest chagrin and disgust; whereupon he begged to be let off from testifying in the case, while reiterating his previously expressed opinions. Finally one of the Glass counsel put the issue up squarely to the professor of veterinary science:
I gather, Doctor, from what you say, that you
differentiate scientific truth from the professional attitude of veterinarians,
and from the system officially adopted to eradicate tuberculosis.
In other words, while it is your professional judgment and the consensus
of opinion among veterinarians, that the tuberculin test is often ineffective
and mistakes are frequently made altogether out of accord with actual scientific
knowledge, nevertheless, these veterinarians and officials have resolved, as a
matter of propaganda, and as an essential protection of the system itself, and
to make its operation less troublesome, to insist upon the processes which now
prevail.
And to this exact and startling summing-up of the situation in re the tuberculin test, the veterinary scientist returned the equally startling answer: "You have exactly stated the case. That is right." Then he was asked:
And yet, Doctor, notwithstanding your opinion just given, you are unwilling to go on the stand and so testify under oath?
When with equal frankness the expert veterinarian replied:
Yes, I am. Should I go on the stand and tell the truth under oath, my usefulness as a veterinary scientist would be destroyed.
At this point Mr. Glass took a hand in catechising the expert:
I infer, Doctor, you find yourself in the same position as my local veterinarian, who frankly told me he did not believe my two heifers were in the least infected, but that he could not retest them because if he did, the State Veterinarian would destroy his livelihood—and he had a wife and children to support.
To this the professor readily assented, and confessed to being in the same humiliating position as the local veterinary on Mr. Glass's farm, with respect to the official over-lords of the Public Health Service. He said he had 30 years longer to live, in the natural order, and that if he should testify to the truth of his professional knowledge, "these people would make it hard for him." He was excused from testifying, and the Glass attorneys notified the opposing counsel that this man's deposition would not be taken because he had said he was unwilling under oath to testify to the truth, for fear of being professionally ruined by the veterinary officials of State-Sponsored Medicine!
All of which is a matter of record in the Virginia court files, and all of which was laid before the Congress of the United States in 1928 along with every other incident of the court battle centering around the "tale of two heifers" on Senator Glass's Montview farm. In what it tells of official corruption and terrorism in a branch of the Public Health Service affecting the lives and property rights of millions of American citizens, we naturally suppose it would have engaged the immediate attention of our national lawmakers; and that the recital would have led to a prompt adoption of Senator Glass's motion for a Federal investigation of the practice of tuberculin-testing for dairy cattle.
In addition to the important material submitted by Senator Glass, the Congress had before it the minutes of a hearing before the House Committee on the District of Columbia Affairs in 1922, when Dr. W. C. Fowler, Health Officer for the District, was urging the passage of a bill—prepared by himself—for the exclusion from the District of all milk from herds that had not been tuberculin-tested. The facts elicited at this hearing, were enough to discredit that test—alone, without the cumulative evidence of the Glass Report. Fowler, after the manner of his kind, was attempting to claim the drop in the death-rate from tuberculosis in the District from 294 per 100,000 in 1900, to 112 per 100,000 population in 1920, was largely due to the tuberculin testing of dairy cows. Two members of the Committee who happened to have the figures, called the Health Officer's bluff in this by reminding him that the reduction of the TB death-rate had been just as great in cities which did not have the tuberculin test—notably New York and Chicago.
A fact which should have further discounted Fowler's claim—and which may have been unknown to him or to the Committee—was that tuberculin testing of dairy herds was not inaugurated in the United States until 1917, did not get well under way until 1918, and could not have had any appreciable effect on the decline of tuberculosis by 1920. When Dr. Fowler was asked by a member of the Congressional Committee the direct question:
Do you know of any instance where bovine tuberculosis was communicated to a human being? Is there a case on record anywhere in the world, to show that tuberculosis has been communicated to a human being through the medium of milk?
the discomfited Health Officer, who had so confidently attributed the decline of tuberculosis in the District of Columbia to the condition of the milk, was forced to make answer:
"I will ask Dr. Schroeder to answer that. Dr.
Schroeder is better posted on that than I am."
"Do you personally know of a single instance?" mercilessly pursued the
Congressional interrogator.
And again Dr. Fowler was forced to answer:
"Personally, I cannot cite one instance, but I will leave that to Dr. Schroeder to answer."
But Dr. Schroeder, for 25 years Superintendent of the Experiment Station of the U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry, when called to testify before the District Committee, proved a very bad witness for the tuberculin testers. Asked if bovine tuberculosis could be transmitted to a human being, Doctor Schroeder would go no further than to say that "it might be done"; but stated as his firm conviction that "infection could not be communicated except through a diseased udder." In his own words to the Committee:
I have drawn milk, and had milk drawn from tubercular cows over and over again under aseptic precautions, in order to ascertain whether tubercle bacilli would be present in it in the absence of udder tuberculosis, and I have never in a single instance succeeded in getting tubercle bacilli from milk of that kind. So that in my own writings I have stated that I do not believe tubercle bacilli are expelled from the body of a tubercular cow through an uninfected udder.
And it goes without saying that if the milk is never infected, nor capable of communicating infection, except when the udder of the animal is visibly diseased, no tuberculin test is needed to ascertain that! Now when to this mass of expert testimony as to the unreliability and futility of the tuberculin test in discovering tuberculosis in animals, there is added the fact—attested by Theobald Smith of Boston, and by Robert Koch of Berlin, the reputed discoverer of the tubercle bacillus and the inventor of tuberculin—that tuberculosis in animals is a wholly different malady from tuberculosis in humans, and actuated by a different "bug," the fraudulent absurdity of the whole tuberculin-testing business is laid bare to any unprejudiced mind. Further proof of its fraudulent character is afforded in the fact that the condemned "reactors" to the test are sold to meat packers, and their flesh—tubercular, according to the test—is passed on as "prime beef" for the market by Government inspectors!
All dairy farmers cannot follow their condemned cows to the slaughter pens, but some of them have done so, and their testimony has been given and approved by competent tribunals, and much testimony of this kind was adduced in the Illinois investigation and included in the Shurtleff Report. There was incorporated in its findings also, the testimony of the best veterinary authorities to the effect that "there are seven different causes for apparent reactions in dairy cows under the tuberculin test," yet the average ignorant or indifferent inspector who does the testing insists upon ascribing the reaction to tuberculosis alone.
In his brochure addressed to Congress, Senator Glass said:
We hear a great deal about "the terrific ravages of bovine tuberculosis," but there are nowhere discoverable any data or statistical information in proof of such talk. I have made it a point to ask scores of stock-breeders and dairymen if they had ever lost by natural death a cow definitely ascertained to have died of tuberculosis; and I have yet to find a single breeder or dairyman to admit any such loss. The U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry, while it has no statistics on the subject, yet puts out the general statement that "dairy cows rarely die of tuberculosis. They will depreciate and go down in their production, but very seldom die from tuberculosis."
Continuing his testimony on this point, Mr. Glass said:
In the absence of credible data or statistics of any kind as to the extent of such losses—deaths from tuberculosis in cows—at most it must be inconsequential, and mere guesswork. But the extent of slaughter under the tuberculin test, and the consequent pecuniary loss to farmers, are not guesswork. The record shows that nearly 1,500,000 animals have been slaughtered in the past 10 years under the system of tuberculin testing. Conservatively, this means a loss to the stock-breeders and dairymen of the country of nearly $150,000,000. The incidental cost of this terrific slaughter in the same period to State and Federal governments has been $119,551,888, a total cost to cattle owners and governments of $269,551,888.
Figures showing the steady increase in this costly business of slaughtering dairy cattle merely on the ipse dixit of a controverted medical theory, were submitted by Senator Glass:
Operating expenses have progressively increased
from $75,000 in 1918 to $1,107,480 for 1929. Federal indemnity increased
progressively from $1,000,000 in 1920 to $4,621,130 for 1929, and State
indemnity increased from $2,000,000 in 1919 to $14,000,000 for 1929.
"And yet," said the Virginia Senator, "in the face of these tremendous
expenditures of money, upon the theory of protecting animal and human life, and
this slaughter of nearly 1,500,000 animals upon the supposition that they were
infected with bovine tuberculosis, the legislative bodies making these
appropriations of the taxpayers' money, seem never to have paused long enough to
inquire whether the theory upon which the expenditures are made is sound, or
whether the expenditures have been judiciously made, or whether the tuberculin
test in practical operation results in the destruction of inconceivably more
dairy cows than would die a natural death, or whether it would not be better to
return to the practice recommended to the Illinois Legislative Committee by the
leading veterinary scientists of the country, that 'a proper and sufficient
physical and clinical examination of dairy cows and the elimination of those
obviously affected in the mammary glands or udder, was quite sufficient' to
insure healthy cows and pure milk."
And then having laid before his colleagues all these proofs of the dishonesty and futility of the tuberculin test, together with the enormous property losses entailed by it, Senator Glass entered his motion that the Congress of the United States which had been appropriating tens of millions of dollars to conduct these tests and to slaughter the property of American farmers, "should appropriate a few thousand dollars to appoint a commission of courageous scientists in conjunction with legislators of practical sense, to investigate the whole problem and methods of tuberculin-testing." As a tip to his fellow dairymen he says:
This Congress would do, if the American
stock-breeders and dairymen would cease being terrorized by the professional
"system" which largely profits by the prevailing processes. One has only to read
the necessarily hurried hearings held by Congressional Committees which pass
upon these appropriations, to note that the chief witnesses for the system may
be catalogued as the beneficiaries of the "operating expenses."
Legislators, in misplaced confidence, accept in good faith the
unsubstantiated statements of persons who are supposed to know everything, but
who in reality know little, if anything, about the problem. For these reasons
the stock-breeding and dairying business of the country has been wickedly
harassed for years—instead of helped—and the costly restrictions are becoming
more and more insufferable each year.
And Senator Glass concluded his presentment of the tuberculin abuse, by exhorting his associates in the stock-breeding and dairy business to "organize a real fight for the reformation of the system," and to secure respect for their property rights. But apparently Senator Glass's Congressional colleagues were more afraid of "the system"—than of the scattered, disorganized hosts of stock-breeders and dairymen whose ability to strike back at them was not so much in evidence.
For the final outcome of the Virginia Senator's efforts to have the Federal Congress take action on his report by ordering a thorough investigation of the tuberculin evil in the cattle industry, was to have his resolution killed in committee, and even his printed report—with all its valuable tabulated evidence—has been allowed to lapse into the "out-of-print" category. The war between individual dairymen and stockbreeders—organized into "dairy farmers' protective associations" in a few States—on the one hand, and the medically directed State veterinarians on the other, is still going on in certain localities; while in others, through the ignorance, sloth, or political collusion with the medico-politico-bund on the part of the live-stock men, this dangerous and disease-breeding tuberculin test is accepted without protest.
Another famous court trial hingeing on the tuberculin test was tried out in the State of Iowa (Mitchell County) in 1926-1929. A petition was filed in the District Court, October term of 1926, by a dairy farmer, M. J. Loftus, against M. G. Thornburg, State veterinarian, asking for a temporary injunction to restrain the latter from subjecting the plaintiff's cattle to the tuberculin test, asking also that on trial and hearing the injunction be made permanent. The case came to trial in June 1928, and on the 31st day of May 1929, Judge M. H. Kepler, the trial judge in the case, after hearing and reviewing all the evidence, pro and con, and the arguments of counsel for both parties to the contention, found in favor of the plaintiff, and declared the application of the tuberculin test unconstitutional in principle and unjustified in practice.
And here are some of the notable findings in this case which influenced this Iowa judge to render this decision:
The court finds from the evidence in this case
that many cattle passed by the tuberculin tester as clean and free from
tuberculosis, afterwards when slaughtered and inspected, are condemned as
tuberculous and adjudged by the inspectors at the packing plants to be so
diseased as to be unfit for food and fit only for the tank. . . . Again the
court finds from the evidence, that some cattle which were claimed to react to
the test, and therefore adjudged tubercular, were found after being slaughtered
to be entirely free from disease, and that this was established by microscopic
examination.
The court finds from the evidence introduced, that from 90 to 95 percent
of the cattle condemned as "reactors," are from outward appearance among the
healthiest and most vigorous ones in the herd; and that on slaughter, from 90 to
92 percent of the cattle reacting are by the inspectors pronounced generally
healthy and their flesh is used for food.
Upon the foregoing, the Iowa Court appears to have based its judgment that the tuberculin test was unreliable and useless; and upon the further finding that "the payment to the owners for cattle slaughtered as reactors is less than the appraised value of such cattle," rested its decision that the practice was a violation of the Constitutional guarantee to citizens that they shall not be deprived of property rights without sufficient cause and "without due process of law."
Summing up the evidence on these points, the Iowa decree reads:
Based on the evidence in this case, the Court finds that the tuberculin test as used as a diagnostic agent to determine whether or not bovine animals have tuberculosis, is not a reliable, efficient or economic test; and does not accurately point out the presence or absence of tuberculosis in the cattle tested; but that it is inaccurate, uncertain, and does not as applied in Mitchell County and in Iowa, protect human or bovine health, and does not conserve or protect the property of cattle owners. . . . As to losses and damage caused by the tuberculin test other than the slaughter of the animals tested, the Court finds from depositions taken in Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and from the testimony of witnesses sworn and examined before the Court, that the owners of herds are damaged in their property rights by this test, in that it—in many instances—causes cows which do not react, to abort and lose their calves; to become sterile, to give offensive and stringy milk unfit for food; to dry up and fail to give milk and to lose the use of portions of the udder. . . . In some instances cows so tested gave milk which caused severe sickness in children and sickness in calves. . . . In some instances the test caused cows which failed to react to produce weak and abnormal calves, to give a diminished milk supply and in other ways affected the health of the cows and their property value. . . . One who is not prejudiced, and who is unaffected by a decision in this case, cannot read the testimony of witnesses and the depositions taken without reaching the conclusion that in many instances abortion in cows is caused by the tuberculin test.
And thus on every count, the Iowa judge in this case ruled against the tuberculin-testers, and granted the plaintiff's petition for a permanent restraining order, at the same time ordering the defendants to defray the cost of the court action. The verdict in this case put new life into the recalcitrants against the test, and since its publication there have been various conflicts between the dairymen and the cattle inspectors, accompanied in some instances with gun-play. In this same year, 1929, counsel for the Ohio Farmers' Protective Association gathered and put into pamphlet form some official figures regarding the milk industry of the country which shed additional light on the puzzle picture of the tuberculin test. First he deduced figures taken from the Year Book of the U. S. Department of Commerce, Volume 1, 1928, which showed an increase in the number of cattle—taking the dairy and other cattle together—in the United States in the ten-year period from 1910 to 1920 of more than 9,000,000 head, practically a million head increase a year.
From 1920 to 1928—during which period the tuberculin-testers got in some of their finest work—there was a yearly drop in the number of cattle until the figure given in 1928 showed a decrease of more than 13 million head for the period of eight years. The significance of this falling off in cattle production under the tuberculin regimen, in sharp contrast with its increase in the decade preceding the inauguration of tuberculin-testing, must be apparent to all save the willfully blind. At a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee in the first session of the 70th Congress, 1929, Dr. Mohler, chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, asking that an appropriation for tuberculin-testing be included in the Agricultural Bill, inadvertently bore witness to the destructive effects of the test upon the cattle industry. On page 128 of the Hearing, we find Dr. Mohler's testimony:
"In 1925," said Dr. Mohler, "we had 11,000,000 cattle under supervision (meaning under the tuberculin test). At that time there were 66,000,-000 head of cattle in the country. In 1926 we had 15,000,000 cattle under supervision. At that time the cattle population had decreased to 60,000,000. In 1927 we tested and had under supervision 18,975,000, or practically 19,000,000 cattle, when the number of cattle in the country had declined to 58,000,000."
Here we have the recorded admission from this high authority, that under tuberculin-testing there was a drop of 8 million head of cattle in two years! Although the dairy industry is perhaps the most outstanding example of the destructive effects of medical voodooism in the business world, it is by no means the only one.