406 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



satisfactorily in Pennsylvania. If nothing more happens, I think 

 it would be well for us to consider today of things that were done dur- 

 ing the last outbreak, or might have been done, to make matters bet- 

 ter, and I think it would be a good plan for us to review a little what 

 lias happened and see if we are not prepared to handle another situ- 

 ation of that kind with better results than this last one. 



I did not prepare a paper on the subject; I just want to consult 

 with you and see if you know of things that were done that 

 should not have been done or if we could have done the work any 

 better than we have. You may think in my making the statement to 

 you that I have in mind, that I am inclined to brag about what hap- 

 pened, but that is not the purpose. I want to tell you just what hap- 

 pened as near as I can in the fifteen minutes allowed to me, and see 

 if you have any suggestions to make that will improve matters. 



Now, a year ago, the nineteenth of October, 1914, the acting chief of 

 the Bureau of Animal Industry called our office on the phone and told 

 us that foot and mouth disease had been diagnosed in the southern 

 part of Michigan, that they had two counties in the southern part of 

 Michigan in quarantine and two in the northern part of Minnesota 

 and that the quarantine was sufficiently broad to cover all the danger 

 at that time. That struck the men connected with the Board much 

 harder than probably it would have struck you if you had heard the 

 same message. We realized the importance of foot-and-mouth dis- 

 ease in this country and got busy at once. Within two hours we 

 had a letter run off on the mimeograph and mailed to over 1,800 

 veterinarians in Pennsylvania and all commission men and cattle 

 men as far as we had a list of those people. We had that letter in the 

 mail in less than two hours, warning them of the danger of the dis- 

 ease, stating where it was located and telling them to be on the 

 lookout for it and to telegraph or call us on the long distance tele- 

 phone if anything suspicious developed in their territory. 



Fortunately in the nineteen hundred and eight outbreak, which 

 occurred six years before. Dr. Pearson was then State Veterinarian, 

 and after the outbreak was over he wrote a careful description of 

 what had happened in that outbreak, just how the work was managed, 

 all the precautions taken, etc., and a more complete description of 

 what happened in that outbreak I doubt if it is possible to write up. 

 As soon as we had our letter out of the way, we began to review our 

 literature and see what was recommended to be done and read over 

 the regulations and symptoms of the disease and try to get ourselves 

 ready as fast as possible, if anything did happen. We notified our 

 agents in Pittsburgh and had a good corps of train men in the Pitts- 

 burgh office and the Lancaster office to watch carefully for any ship- 

 ments from the West that came through those points for symptoms of 

 foot-and-mouth disease, and men were put on their guard watching 

 every shipment that came through. 



Another thing we did, we sent a good man to Chicago to see if there 

 was possibly any danger there. He went out about the 24th of Oc- 

 tober and he looked the situation over there to keep track of what 

 was going on and see if there was any danger of infection getting 

 into the Chicago stockyards, and reported no suspicious 

 cases in Pennsylvania until the 29th of October; that was ten 

 days after we got the notice, then we had a true case of foot-and- 



