Tuberculosis. 153 



addition to this they must expend considerable money in preparing 

 and presenting their claims before the Court, and in furnishing 

 witnesses, many prefer to make no report of the disease to the 

 authorities but to deal with it themselves. If men of high 

 principle they personally bear all the losses, but if not, they too 

 often send the diseased animals to market and thus provide for 

 the starting of new centres of infection, or they slaughter them 

 and sell the carcasses as human food. Thus the system of indem- 

 nification, surrounded, as it is by delays and uncertainties, becomes 

 a means of spreading instead of restricting or extirpating the 

 afiection. 



With the obvious safeguards of the affidavits of worthy men act- 

 ing as inspectors and appraisers, for the State, and with the 

 endorsement of their superior officer, payments could be made 

 promptly, and the dread of serious loss would no longer deter 

 stockowners from cooperating heartily with the State in the puri- 

 fying of their herds. Relieve the owner of the present vexations 

 delays, of the legal and court expenses and the State will be fur- 

 nished with a powerful lever for the work of suppressing the 

 contagion. 



• 



F. No Provision for Efficient Disinfection. 



The existing law provides no definite means for the disinfection 

 of contaminated premises, and, therefore, this most essential duty 

 is thrown upon the owner to accomplish at his own expense and 

 too often in his own way. Yet the extreme measure of killing 

 the infecting or diseased animal entails the imperative duty of 

 thoroughly disinfecting the place where such animal has been. 

 Without this the expropriation and killing is a comparatively 

 futile procedure. In the hands of an inexperienced farmer the 

 attempt at disinfection is far more likely to be insufficient than 

 complete, and if imperfect all or much of the trouble and expense 

 has been thrown away. In all veterinary sanitary work, looking 

 toward the extinction of a contagion, the work must be of a very 

 radical nature, and if it fails in this it may be looked on as practi- 

 cally a failure. Restriction of the disease there may be without 

 this, but extinction, never. With mere restriction outlay for pre- 



