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THE AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION'S MEETING AT 

 OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. 



Foot and Mouth Disease and Hog Cholera. 



The live stock industry of the United States received last year 

 one of the most severe blows in its existence. 



The dreaded disease aphthous fever, commonly called foot and 

 mouth disease, made its appearance, practically in the center of 

 the United States. To this day nothing definite is known as to 

 how the infection was introduced. By surmise and deductions 

 the live stock sanitarians have reached the conclusion that the 

 disease was brought in with tanning materials from Japan. Two 

 previous outbreaks, in 1902 and 1906, respectively, were traced to 

 smallpox vaccine imported from abroad. In both of these cases, 

 however, the disease was quickly recognized and its spread lim- 

 ited to a comparatively small number of states. Last year, how- 

 ever, nearly two months elapsed before the final diagnosis was 

 made and the machinery of eradication set in motion. By that 

 time the disease was scattered from the Atlantic to the Rocky 

 Mountains and from Minnesota and Michigan to Arkansas and 

 Texas — the Chicago Stock Yards even serving as a center of 

 distribution. The situation was extremely serious and called for 

 heroic measures such as had never before been dreamed of — 

 leave alone the expenditure of millions of dollars. In less than 

 a year, however, the disease was under complete control, only a 

 few scattered localities remaining in quarantine, an achieve- 

 ment which did much to rehabilitate the standing of the veteri- 

 nary profession and especially of the Federal Bureau of Animal 

 Industry, which had to bear the brunt of "chimerical and vitu- 

 perative opinions of the general and agricultural press" for fail- 

 ing to recognize the disease in time. But "although the sacrifices 

 had been great and the cost enormous, (says the National Stock- 

 man and Farmer of Pittsburg, Pa.,) they were as a molehill 

 to a mountain in comparison with the sacrifices and cost of polic- 

 ing and other measures which would have become necessary 

 had the disease been allowed to become permanently established 

 among our flocks and herds, imposing endless quarantines, con- 

 demnations and losses to stockmen, slaughterers and all con- 

 cerned in the live stock industry." 



But the end was not yet. The veterinary meeting in Oakland 

 was expected to be the greatest gathering of its kind ever 

 brought together, some 900 or 1,000 members being expected. 

 Instead of that about 150 put in an appearance and the greater 

 majority of these came from the Pacific Coast States. The cause 

 for this was a new outbreak of the same disease, not less than 

 five states, New York, ^lichigan, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota, 

 reporting outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in widely scat- 

 tered localities. This news came like a thunderbolt from a 



