246 EPITOME OF EVIDENCE ON PLEURO-PNEUMONIA. 



visiting the byres, and I am certain that if they were carrying 

 inoculating matter with them they would not carry infection. 

 At a meeting of the Central Society in Paris only a few months 

 ago, it was shown that their system, in fact, is wrong, and that 

 their failures are owing to their having pursued a wrong method 

 of inoculation. I am prepared to admit the possibility that a 

 percentage of animals may have the disease in a limited area of 

 the lung ; such cases have come under my notice, but it is not 

 my experience that these animals, after passing through inocula- 

 tion, disseminate disease. On the contrary, so strong am I of 

 that opinion, that I stuck out against Professor Brown on that 

 point, and advised the Kirkcudbright authorities to get a num- 

 ber of animals inoculated. Eleven out of forty-six were inocu- 

 lated, and those that were killed were more or less diseased. I 

 was positive, from the manner in which the eleven took my 

 inoculation, that they would be saved. I did it twice to make 

 sure of it. They were very valuable animals. Mr Biggar put 

 the cattle on three different places on the estate, and he pur- 

 chased store cattle, which he mixed with those animals; and 

 now, after a period of six months' exposure, not a single animal 

 has been found ill with the disease. Mr Biggar is now so satis- 

 fied as to the impossibility of the animals taking the disease, 

 that he has mixed them with the whole of his stock on the 

 Grange, a neighbouring estate. I am very particular in 

 killing off everything that shows the least sign of the disease, 

 even if there is only a moderate suspicion. The consequence 

 of that is that it is almost impossible for an animal to escape 

 observation unless the disease is in an exceedingly limited area. 

 Complete inoculation alters that area. The whole power of 

 the disease seems to be destroyed. I believe there is a consum- 

 ing of the material out of which the disease grows, and the lesion 

 of the lung becomes a non-contagious one. In many outbreaks I 

 have been placing fresh stock among the inoculated animals, 

 and I have never got pleuro-pneumonia among fresh stock. In 

 some cases, where I have thought the premises were capable of 

 conveying the disease, and had bad drainage and other un- 

 favourable surroundings, I have insisted on a long quarantine, 

 because I believe there is more danger from surroundings to the 

 animal than from animals themselves. If it was the case that 

 those inoculated animals continued to communicate the disease, 

 we would have had the disease continually in Edinburgh and 

 other places. Now, it is a positive fact that I can take you to 

 scores of places where pleuro-pneumonia has not been known 

 since successful inoculation was practised, and prior to Avhich it 

 never was absent. I attended Mr Stenhouse's cattle ; the 

 outbreak was last summer, about nine months ago. I was 

 called in for consultation by Mr Borthwick, V.S. The stock is a 



