The Cattle-Plague. 255 



the expense of endurance. What is sacrificed for it in horned 

 and other stock ? Apart from the deteriorated quality of meat 

 thus produced, this laying on of fat and want of exercise engender 

 muscle wanting in firmness, excess of fatty tissues, defective 

 secretion, loss of tone of the respiratory and cii'culating organs, 

 fatty disease of liver and heart, predisposition to disease, and 

 want of power to resist its effects." These remarks are quite in 

 accordance with the observations of one of our best pathological 

 anatomists. Dr. GanT, who, two or three winters since, aroused 

 the ire of the prize-winning breeders by laughing to scorn the 

 complaisant manner in which they talked of fat, and valued their 

 cattle for the same reason that a Sandwich Islander values his 

 wives. He made a great many post-moiiem examinations of the 

 prize animals, and used words of warning concerning the en- 

 feebled vital organs that will recur to most readers. These 

 being the views and facts stirring the minds of thinking men, 

 it becomes our duty to ask, " Is there any predisposing relation 

 between the high-pressure feeding of cattle hitherto prevalent 

 and the propagation of this plague among them ? " Time will 

 show, provided only accurate official returns of the plague's 

 comparative diffusion among different breeds be supplied. In 

 this country there is a marked difference in the mortality of the 

 cattle of various districts suffering not only under this, but other 

 disorders. The same treatment in different localities is not pro- 

 ductive of the same results. Lord AlRLlE, speaking in the House 

 of Lords (Feb. 20) concerning the percentage of recoveries, 

 shows them to have been 4 per cent, in the metropolitan police 

 district, 12 per cent, in Wales, 20 per cent, in Scotland, In 

 Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Kent, to 17th February, 

 there was a proportion of 1 recovery to 7 deaths ; while in four 

 Scotch counties the proportion Avas 1 recovery to 3 deaths. In 

 Yorkshire the recoveries are 17^ per cent., in Cheshire only 

 7 per cent. Such differences as these render it desirable that 

 the veterinary department of the Privy Conncil should be perma- 

 nently charged with the duty of supplying quarterly returns 

 similar to those of the Registrar-General, from which the country 

 has derived such indubitable benefits. 



Bearing in mind the close affinity the cattle-plague bears to 

 typhoid fever and small-pox, it is natural to expect to find the 

 same set of predisposing causes at work in one case as in the 

 other. Thus we look for what depraves the vital powers in bad 

 living,* over-crowding,t filthy steading, exposure to extremes of 



* It is generally allowed that typhus can be produced de novo by over- 

 crowding, especially when starvation has enfeebled the system. It may further 

 be stated that there never has been a state of unusual poverty but it has been fol- 

 lowed by an epidemic and fever. 



f Lest the fact should be considered unanswerable that in the metropolis, in 



