24 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



the pure air of heaven as near the north pole as cattle have reached, drinking the frozen 

 waters of North America or the stagnant pools in the swamps of the Carolinas and 

 Louisiana during the hottest summers, the hard toils and sufferings of many a Mexican 

 yoke of oxen, and, lastly, the greatest negligence of an agricultural people in relation to 

 the improvements of breeds, one and all have failed ever to induce a single case of lung 

 plague. Delafond had his theories. We have an array of facts on our side as great and 

 as incontrovertible as any ever before adduced in support of any medical or other question. 

 But brevity is not always desirable when the object to be attained is the diffusion of 

 an abundant and accurate knowledge, and interesting points may be beneficially discussed 

 under the separate heads arranged by Delafond. 



SPECIAL CAUSES FAVORING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISEASE IN MOUNTAINS. 



Delafond asserts that in Switzerland, Piedmont, the Juras, the Dauphind, the Vosges, 

 and the Pyrenees, pleuropneumonia has existed permanently. He does not ascribe this to 

 geological formation, but he believes firmly, with almost all the veterinarians in moun 

 tainous districts, that the disposition, topographic situation of mountains and valleys, the 

 cold temperature during six months of the year; hoar frost, heavy fogs, coldness and 

 moisture of the nights and mornings on woodland pastures, or near lakes and rivers; 

 frequent atmospheric currents in spring and autumn; sudden changes from hot to cold, 

 dry to wet, or vice versa, &c., etc., are the local determining causes which combine, with 

 other causes that have yet to be noticed, in inducing the lung plague. Delafond s words 

 are that the causes enumerated concur &quot;d donncr naissance d la pfripncumonie dans la 

 haute et Jans la basse monlagnc.&quot; 



Delafond erred, He had not read llaller; and had he visited any part where it was 

 said the lung plague was a permanent infliction, he would have found, with Haller, that 

 it was always arriving from somewhere, but never originating spontaneously. If we 

 examine the geographical distribution of the disease we shall find the mountains of 

 Northern Europe, of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, free from the disease. And yet the 

 special causes he refers lo predominate there. No part of Europe has been more constantly 

 devastated than Holland, noted for its submerged condition and the vast drainage works 

 which render it inhabitable. In the British Isles the hills have always been most free 

 from pleuropneumonia. It has prevailed at all altitudes, but the Scottish and Irish 

 mountains, distant from high roads and the busy traffic in cattle, have been the healthiest 

 parts of the country. And in America, too, the disease has traveled from the east south 

 ward along the coast, attacking cities and farms most in communication with those cities. 

 It has not penetrated to the fine dairy farms on the hills in New York State, and is not 

 indigenous on the Alleghanies. It were a much easier task to trace the malady to fertile 

 valleys, where cattle are often covered, as in Holland, to be protected from cold, and to 

 towns where animals are always in stables, than to trace the spontaneous origin of the 

 disease to the mountains of Central and Western Europe. 



FEEDING. 



There are many farmers, apt to reason on insufficient data, who notice coincidences 

 between the development of the lung disease and the great increase in some countries in 

 the number of distilleries, and the amount of grains and distillery waste fed to cattle. 



