CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 439 



has been constantly in many of the clairics aronud him. This bridges over the time 

 from the Skillman-sticct and Mealiim cases down to the present day. 



Twenty years ago (1859) Mr. Benjamin Albertson, Queens, Queens County, Lon^ 

 Island (New York), purchased four cows out of a Herkimer-County herd which had 

 got belated and had been kept over night in a stable in Sixth street, New York, where 

 the cattle market then was. These cows sickened with lung fever and infected his 

 large herd of 100 head, 25 of which died in rapid succession and 19 more slowly. He 

 was left with but 60 head out of a herd, after the purchase of the four, of 104 ani- 

 mals, and honorably declined to sell the survivors at high prices to his unsuspecting 

 noighboi-s, but sold a number athalf price to a Brooklyn milkman, who already had the 

 disease in hia herd and knew all the circumstances. 



Twelve years ago (lb67) Lawrence Ansert, Broadway and Eidge Street, Astoria, 

 (New York), bought of a dealer two cows, which soon after sickened and died, and 

 infected the remainder of his herd of 18. Eight of them died of the disease, and he 

 fattened and killed the remaining ten, and began anew with fresh premises and stock. 

 He has lost none since. 



The next case, like the last, affords a most instructive contrast to the first two, as 

 showing how the disease may be permanently eradicated by proper seclusion. In 1872, 

 Frank Devine, of Old Farm-Hoiise Hotel, West Chester, purchased from a dealer a cow 

 which soon sickened and died. The disease extended to the rest of his herd, and in 

 eeven months he lost thirty-sis cows. lie appreciated the danger of contagion, and 

 began again with new stock, keeping them rigidly apart from the infected beasts and 

 premises, and from that time onward avoided all dealers and bred his own stock, with 

 the happy result that in the last six years ho had not had a single case of lung fever 

 in his herd. 



The virulence and infectious nature of the disease does not seem to 

 have been lessened by its transplantation to this country. Many in- 

 stances are given which show conclusively that it is equally as fatal to- 

 day in those localities in the United States in which it exists as it is in 

 its' home in the far east, or in those nations of Europe which it has in- 

 vaded. Speaking of the contagious and infectious nature of the malady, 

 Dr. Law says : 



No one who has studied the plagne in Europe can truthfully claim that it is less in- 

 fectious here thafl in the Old World. What misleads many is, that during the cooler 

 season many of the cases assume a sub-acute type, and others subside into a chronic 

 form with a mass of infecting material (dead lung) encysted in the chest, but un.at- 

 t«ndo(l by acute symptoms. But this feature of the disease renders it incomparably 

 more insidious and dangerous than in countries where the symptoms are so much more 

 severe, that even the owners are roused at once to measures of prevention. In mod- 

 erating the violence of its action, the disease docs not part with its infecting qualities, 

 but only diffuses them the more sitbtilely in proportion as its true nature is liable to 

 be overlooked. A main reason why unobser-ant people fail at first sight to see that 

 the lung fever is contagious is, that the seeds lie so long dormant in the system. A 

 beast purchased in October passes a bad winter, and dies in February, after having 

 infected several others. She has had a long period of incubation, and when the disease 

 wpervenes actively, she has passed through a chronic form of illness, so that when 

 others sickeu, people fail to connect the new cases with the infected purchase. Then,' 

 again, in an ordinarj' herd of 10 or 20 head the deaths do not follow in rapi"d succes- 

 sion, but at intervals of a fortnight, a mouth, or even more, and those unacquainted 

 with the nature of the disease supjiose that it cannot be infectious, or all would be 

 prostrated at once. 



The disease may be communicated by immediate contact, through the 

 atmosphere for some considerable distance, by the inhalation of i)ulrao- 

 nary exiulation when placed in the nostrils, from impregnated clothing 

 of attendants, through infected buildings, infected manure, infected 

 pastures, infected fodder, &c. Healthy cattle have been contaminated 

 after being lodged in stables that were occupied by diseased ones three 

 or four months previously. Hay spoiled by sick cattle has induced the 

 disease after a long period, and pastures grazed upon three months be- 

 fore have infected healthy stock. The flesh of diseased animals has also 

 conveyed the malady ; and it is recorded by Fleming that the contagion 

 from catUo buried in the ground infected others 50 or 60 feet distant. 



