EPITOME OF EVIDENCE ON PLEURO-PNEUMONIA. 277 



pleuro-pneumonia. The weak point is the fifty-six days' deten- 

 tion, after which the cattle go helter-skelter all over the country. 

 The local authority have appointed me with power to slaughter 

 and compensate. I do not require to go back and convene a 

 meeting; we order slaughter there and then. I do not make 

 a declaration till the animal is dead. The outcome of all this 

 is, that for twelve years before the Contagious Diseases Acts 

 came into operation the loss from pleuro-pneumonia was £6000 

 some odd hundreds a year, and now we have got it reduced to 

 £600. There is no place where you will find less pleuro- 

 pneumonia than in Glasgow. We have none now. I do not see 

 any objection to recommend inoculation to be carried out under 

 the same conditions as in the United States, where they allow 

 animals to be inoculated, and then taken out for slaughter only. 

 An animal can be inoculated at any time, even although it has 

 a lung lesion. I do not think that an animal which has had an 

 attack of pleuro-pneumonia, and recovered without any portion of 

 its lungs remaining encysted, can take pleuro-pneumonia twice. 

 Cattle labouring under disease by the natural method can be 

 successfully inoculated. I have been able to prove that. I 

 have recorded here several cases where animals were inoculated, 

 and the inoculation successfully taken, so much so that the 

 operator had amputated the tails and declared them all right, 

 and yet these animals within a fortnight showed well-marked 

 symptoms of pleuro-pneumonia. After they were killed the 

 lungs showed structural changes which could not have come 

 on after inoculation. And then as regards the temperature, that 

 is not reliable. In some outbreaks we have a temperature 105° 

 or 106°. In other cases we have the temperature normal, and the 

 lung lesion well marked. Till within the last two or three years 

 I had thought that it could not happen, but some of them — 

 not old chronic lesions — have had pleuro-pneumonia with a 

 normal temperature. If you allow a sound animal to congre- 

 gate with an animal labouring under this disease for six weeks 

 or so, and put it among sound stock, it is likely to contaminate 

 that stock. I think that the contagion is not easily carried 

 except by moving the infected animal, and by the breath. I 

 would not like to say that it could not be carried except by an 

 infected animal or the breath of that animal, but I think it is 

 scarcely possible to carry it on your clothes. In my experience, 

 I have not carried the disease to any animal. I believe by the 

 breathing of the animal the organism of infection is exhaled. I 

 do not think that the excrement, the urine, or the provender 

 is fitted to convey it. I do not think that the contagion can be 

 carried very far. I have known outbreaks in one byre which 

 never extended to another byre, and yet not above eight feet 

 betwixt them. I have always acted on the principle that the 



