FIFTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 635 



AFTERNOON SESSION. 



Vice-Prt'sident Gunn in the chair. 



The Chair: I am going to change the program just a little. 

 Doctor J. 1. Gibson is with us now, and as he is very b'asy at this 

 time, we will hear from him on the foot and mouth disease. 



FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE. 



BY DR. J. I. GIBSON, DES MOINES. 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: I don't suppose it is necessary for me 

 to talk particularly about the disease. The time is too short to tell you 

 all about the foot and mouth disease, and I couldn't tell all if I tried. 

 It is an eruptive blood disease, causing high fever in the early stages, 

 rapid emaciation, then vesicles form, and rupture forming ulcers. When 

 the eruption takes place, the fever drops, the same as in measles and all 

 other eruptive diseases that you know about in your own families. There 

 is a difference in the infective agent connected with the spread of each 

 disease. The infections differ in virulence and in carrying possibilities. 

 It is enough for me to say that foot and mouth disease infection is as 

 easily carried as any known disease of man or beast, because it is readily 

 carried on the clothing and the shoes of the attendant of animals, and 

 by various other carriers. 



Now I will take up just for a short time this outbreak. It was first 

 located in Michigan, adjacent to the town of Niles. In this town is a 

 tannery that does quite an extensive business, and it is supposed that 

 this outbreak came from one of two or three causes. One is hides from 

 foreign countries. While we have always maintained that the United 

 States was free from foot and mouth disease, and have always stamped 

 it out when it appeared in this country, yet we have some domain that 

 is always infected — the Philippine islands, for instance. One report is 

 that water buffalo hides from the Philippine islands produced this disease. 

 Another is that tanning materials from Japan and the Argentine Republic 

 produced it. These materials were put up in a peculiarly woven, heavy, 

 mat-like sack. These sacks made good door-mats, and some of them were 

 carried home from the tanneries; and I believe the disease was first seen 

 on those premises. 



You have heard it charged that there was unnecessary delay in con- 

 nection with handling this outbreak in the first four counties — first in 

 the two counties in Michigan, and then they found it had spread into 

 two counties in Indiana which adjoined. There was some delay. The 

 government first sent their men there and took virus from the patients 

 and sent it to Washington, and they made inoculations and failed to 

 produce the disease on inoculation. For some reason or other the virus 

 became attenuated — weakened — in transit, as is often the case. I might 

 further state that the first cases in Michigan were very mild cases. Evi- 

 dently, the virus that started this outbreak in Michigan, was almost 



