312 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, 



thorax. We have a similar form of disease in the human 

 system, though not contagious ; and there is no connec- 

 tion between the human and the bovine forms of these 

 lung difficulties. The disease in man is an inflammation of 

 those organs, while the one in question is a specific and conta- 

 gions fever. It is in fact a "blood disease," so called, and the 

 inflammatory symptoms are only seconc^rtr?/ ; for the disease may 

 run such an insidious course that there will not appear any 

 very perceptible phenomena connected with those vital organs. 

 And when a creature has once passed through even a mild 

 form of this disease, it is ever afterward exempt from such an 

 attack, the same as with measles and scarlet fever. And it 

 has been found by experiment that we may inoculate this dis- 

 ease, and thus get a mild or varioloid form, which also ex- 

 empts the creature the same as vaccination does from small- 

 pox. But such inoculations have not always been attended 

 with satisfactory results, inasmuch as it is often difficult to 

 obtain suitable lymph from the lung at the right stage of the 

 disease, free h-on\ ^nis or other morbific matter. And unless 

 great caution is taken in thus inoculating a given herd, the 

 disease may even spread by such experimentatives, and also 

 prove occasionally fatal, so we should be on our guard when 

 attempting to retrench this disease by inoculation. Yet with 

 care, valuable results may be obtained, and thus the herds in 

 any locality may enjoy a perfect immunity from this dire ca- 

 lamity. 



Tiiis method of inoculation is extensively practiced in the 

 swill-milk stables of Brooklyn, L. I., and its effects have given 

 rise to the " Stumptail Cattle Disease," so called. Epizootic 

 pleuropneumonia is comparatively a new disease in the United 

 States, and though its ravages have been felt for centuries 

 upon the continent of Europe, yet it is within the last thirty 

 years that this lung plague has appeared upon our virgin soil. 

 The first case occurred in the Brooklyn cattle sheds in 1843, 

 from direct importation, and it has been lurking about the 

 stables in that vicinity with more or less severity ever since. 



In 1847, Thomas Richardson, of New Jersey, imported 

 some English stock, which brought the disease over here 



