300 Seventeenth Annual Repokt of the 



With our twentieth century knowledge, however, of the micro- 

 bial! causes of communicable diseases, we can no longer shut our 

 eyes to the fact that the introduction from abroad of a laboratory 

 preparation, which confessedly contains, or may by any reason- 

 able probability be inferred to contain, a germ of a pestilential 

 disease, is a traffic that should be absolutely prohiuited, or, if per- 

 mitted at all, should Ik- only in ease of a very urgent need, and 

 surrounded by such elaborate safeguards as would make the escape 

 of the dangerous germ an impossibility. Anything short of this 

 is a virtual repudiation of the science and civilization of the time, 

 and a deliberate turning of the wheels of human progress back- 

 ward. 



One good definition of civilization would be, the outcome and 

 evidence of the improvement and advancement of humanity 

 through attention to the experience of the past. If any one fails 

 to learn by such experience, he but stamps himself as, in this 

 respect, leaning toward the savage rather than the civilized being. 

 If a nation sets aside the teaching of experience it, in this matter, 

 elects for itself a lower grade of existence and casts aside the 

 greatness that God has designed for it. 



In the line of veterinary sanitation, examples of the neglect of 

 such intelligent actions press upon us on every side. Lung plague 

 in cattle was imported in 1848, and, in the absence of all sanitary 

 precautions, prevailed for 46 years, at a loss of millions annually, 

 until, by the application of rational, scientific measures, it was 

 finally extirpated in 1892 and this great drain on our industrial 

 resources dried up. Texas fever depends for its existence on the 

 maintenance of the southern cattle tick which could easily be 

 eradicated by one of several methods, and 25,000,000 cattle, worth 

 at least $750,000,000, thereby added to the wealth of the South. 

 Canine madness, now almost ubiquitous in New York as in France, 

 where the immunization of a bitten person is the usual resort, 

 could, by the universal muzzling of dogs for a year, and the disin- 

 fection of contaminated premises, be completely wiped out without 

 leaving a single germ to start the plague anew. Turning to aph- 

 thous fever, the subject of this paper, we find in the United States 

 72,473,996 head of cattle and over 100,000,000 sheep and swine, 

 all susceptible to this pest and ready, almost without exception, 



