REPORT. 



To the Honorable the Governor and the 



Executive Council of the State of Maine : 



The undersigned, Commissioners appointed by the Governor to 

 proceed to Massachusetts and inquire into the character and extent 

 of the alarming disease pi'evailing there among cattle, and the 

 means to be employed for its prevention or extirpation, have at- 

 tended to the service assigned them, and respectfully 



KEPORT: 



That we find the disease called Pleuro-Pneumonia existing in 

 some of the herds of Massachusetts ; that it was introduced thither 

 by means of cattle imported from Holland by AVinthrop W. Che- 

 nery, Esq., of Belmont, and which arrived on the 29th of May, 

 1859. Two of the four animals thus imported died soon after 

 arrival ; one was noticed to be ill about the 20th of June and died 

 in nine days after — the fourth is yet living. Some time in August 

 another cow in Mr. C.'s herd became sick, and died in about a 

 fortnight, and in the course of the two subsequent months he lost 

 about thirty head of cattle by the disease. Veterinary surgeons 

 were called in from time to time, and the mortality was, at first, 

 ascribed to want of proper ventilation ; which was, undoubtedly a 

 serious cause of aggravation, but the true nature of the disease was 

 not discovered until November, when Dr. E. F. Thayer, a skillful 

 veterinary surgeon, on visiting the herd, at once, and unhesitating- 

 ly pronounced it to be the disease known in Europe as Pleuro- 

 pneumonia ; and here we may remark that this name appears to be 

 an unfortunate one, inasmuch as it conveys to those familiar with 

 the term, a false as well as a true idea of its character; true, in that 

 both the lungs and pleura are diseased, and false, because this dis- 

 ease differs essentially from pleuro-pneumonia proper, as hitherto 

 known both here and abroad, and in both men and in brute animals, 

 and which is a less fatal disease, and is not contagious. 



