painlessly
destroyed or disposed of. Those which appeared to be immune were kept in
a thoroughly healthy, sanitary quarantine station for six months or a
year, and again tested by tuberculin before being introduced into the
cages. The original stock of monkeys was treated in the same manner or
else destroyed completely, and the houses and cages thoroughly cleaned
and sterilized or new ones constructed. Keepers employed in the
monkey-house were carefully tested for signs of tuberculosis, and
rejected or excluded if any appeared. Signs were posted forbidding any
expectoration or feeding of the animals (which latter is often done
with nuts or fruit which had been cracked or bitten before being handed
to the monkeys) by the general public, and these rules were strictly
enforced.

At the same time the houses were thoroughly ventilated and exposed to
sunlight as much as possible, and the animals were turned out into open
air cages whenever the weather would possibly permit. As a result the
mortality from tuberculosis promptly sank from thirty per cent to five
or six per cent. In our Bronx Zoo, for instance, it has become decidedly
rare as a cause of death in monkeys, no case having occurred in the
monkey-house for eighteen months past. What is even more gratifying, the
general mortality declined also, though in less proportion, so that,
instead of losing twenty-five to thirty per cent of the animals in the
house every year, a mortality of ten to fifteen per cent is now
considered large.

And to think that we might achieve the same results in our own species
if we would only treat ourselves as well as we do our monkey captives!
To "make a monkey of one's self" might have its advantages from a
sanitary point of view.

"But this method," some one will remind us, "would silence only a part
of the enemy's infection batteries." Even supposing that we could
prevent the spread of the disease from human sources, what of the animal
consumptives and their deadly bacilli? If the milk that we drink, and
the beef, pork, and poultry that we eat, are liable to convey the
infection, what hope have we of ever stopping the invasion?

The question is a serious one. But here again a thorough and careful
study of the enemy's position has shown the danger to be far less than
it appeared at first sight. Even bacilli have what the French call "the
defects of their virtues." Their astonishing and most disquieting powers
of adjustment, of accommod