RINDERPEST. 



[The Secretary of the Treasury having submitted to the Department 

 of Agriculture the question, Whether the disease of rinderpest could be 

 transmitted to this country through the medium of dry or salted hides 1 

 the response was the following opinion by Prof. James Law, of Cornell 

 University.] 



In answer to the question submitted to me, I would reply that while 

 perfectly fresh hides, like all other products of the victims of the 

 rinderpest, are capable of communicating the disease, no authentic 

 instance can be adduced of its conveyance bj'' dried (hard) or salted 

 hides. On the contrary, a number of experiments, instituted with the 

 object of trying this question, has established that dry or salted rinder- 

 pest hides are harmless. These experiments have been conducted in 

 both east and west of Europe with similar negative results. Dr. 

 Eawitsch made "many experiments with dried hides, and with skins 

 which had been hung up in the open air and exposed during 

 twenty-four hours. These skins never infected a single animal. On the 

 same cattle were afterward laid fresh hides, or they were inoculated 

 with fresh virus, and they died. Professor Brauell also experimented 

 largely by inoculating cattle with dried skins and dried hair, but when 

 these articles were inoculated more than forty-eight hours after their 

 removal from the animal furnishing them no case of infection resulted. 

 These experiments were conducted in the Eussian steppes. In the 

 north of Europe, Weith, Lorinzer, and Spinola have found the hides 

 infecting on the eighth day after removal from the body. ISTo doubt the 

 cold, perhaps even the freezing, of the elements prevented their decom- 

 position. But the disease has nowhere been even plausibly traced to 

 dry or salted hides. 



Contrary to what is true of most animal poisons, that of rinderpest 

 is very easily destroyed, and it seems probable that the chemical 

 changes occurring in skins rolled up in balls or hung up so as to be freely 

 exposed to th'e air are quite sufficient to destroy the contagion. As an 

 instance of its rapid extinction I may note that at the experimental 

 stables at Albert Veterinary College, London, in 1866, sick and healthy 

 animals were kept in adjacent stables, under one roof, and looked after 

 by the same attendant, who thrice a day supplied the wants of the 

 healthy and those of the diseased. On no occasion did he return to the 

 healthy for several hours after visiting the sick, and in this interval the 

 virus about his clothes must have been decomposed, as this state of 

 things lasted several weeks without any harm coming to the sound cattle. 

 Finally Professor Gerlach, of Hanover, visited the sick animals, and 

 went straight from them into the stable of sound stock, with the result 

 that two days thereafter two of those showed signs of rinderpest, and 

 • the stable was permanently infected. 



In view of such facts as the above, most European nations permit the 

 free traffic in dry and salted hides, and we may do so with equal safety. 

 Even if they came more in contact with cattle than they do after the 

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