1866. | The Cattle Plague. 31 
transit. With this exception, and except cattle driven from one part 
of the same farm to another, the transit of cattle should be absolutely 
prohibited. 
“e, Precautions should be taken that every animal sold for 
butcher’s meat be slaughtered within a short and fixed period. 
Cattle sold at a fair or market should not be allowed to leave the 
precincts of the place alive. 
“d. It would be desirable to draw some more distinct line 
between infected and uninfected districts than is at present traced 
by the orders in Council. The egress of live cattle from a pro- 
claimed district should be strictly prohibited, but cattle slaughtered 
within it and certified by the district inspector to be fit for food 
might be sent out of it.” 
These, then, are the measures which the Royal Commissioners 
recommend, and which Government will, in all probability, adopt, 
in order to confine the disease to the particular herds in which it 
exists, for long enough to ensure the destruction of the poisonous 
contagion. 
It is to be hoped that when that event shall happily have arrived, 
a much seyerer inspection of imported cattle will be instituted at 
the ports of departure and arrival than has hitherto been possible. 
We conclude with the review of the subject which the report of the 
Commissioners contains :— 
“The cattle plague is, in the language of medicine, a specific 
disease, belonging to the class of contagious fevers. The contagious 
matter is subtle, volatile, prolific in an unexampled degree. It is 
conveyed in a most virulent form in the excretions from the diseased 
animal. Any particle of those excretions may serve as a vehicle for 
it. We know not the limit of time within which it disengages itself 
from them, nor to what distance it may not be diffused. It may 
travel, we know, in the hide, horns, hoofs, and intestines of the dead 
animal ; the offal, therefore, is highly dangerous. It lurks unde- 
veloped in the system for a period about which some difference of 
opinion exists, which certainly is not less than five days, usually 
seven or eight, but appears to be more prolonged in some cases. 
Towards the end of this period of incubation, but at what precise 
point we do not know, it becomes capable of diffusing itself by con- 
tagion. A diseased animal may, therefore, be infectious before it 
shows any signs of disease, or, at all events, before the malady be- 
trays itself to any but a very close and very skilful observer. The 
proportion of cases in which it is fatal is extraordinarily large. No 
specific has been discovered which neutralizes or expels the poison ; 
judicious treatment may enable nature to resist till the virus has spent 
itself; injudicious treatment may have a contrary effect ; but that is 
all. The practical conclusion, therefore, at which foreign physicians 
and foreign Governments have arrived,—the conclusion that it is 
better always to kill a diseased animal, or a few diseased animals, 
