THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 21 



plague reached her at the starting point of a great distributing cattle 

 traffic instead of at its terminus, as it did, the nine months' delay would 

 have rendered her efforts fruitless, and the plague would have been per- 

 petuated on her soil. The contrast between the splendid success of 

 Massachusetts on her inclosed farms and the failure of Australia on 

 her open pastures, though the latter was no less energetic and far more 

 prodigal of her money, is a lesson of the gravest import to the United 

 States. Today we have it in our power to stamp out this pestilence, 

 but if we criminally delay until it shall have reached our open pasture 

 lands we shall but repeat the experience of Australia, and must resign 

 ourselves to the permanent incubus of the pestilence circulating from 

 the sources of our cattle traffic, through its various channels, into every 

 State in the Union. 



INFECTION OF NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY, AND ADJACENT STATES. 



The statement has been generally accepted that a Mr. Thomas Rich- 

 ardson, of New Jersey, introduced lung plague from England in a ship- 

 ment of shorthorns ; and discovering the true nature of the disease, 

 nobly stamped it out by the slaughter of his whole herd, valued at 

 $10,000. A sequel to the story is that some of the neighbors had their 

 stock infected by using the hay taken from a barn where the diseased 

 cattle had been. Strangely enough,^the place where the meritorious act 

 took place seems to have been withheld from the public, so that no more 

 accurate information can be obtained. 



The importation which first fixed the lung plague in the port of New 

 York was that of a single cow bought by Peter Dunn, milkman, Brook- 

 lyn, from the captain of the English ship Washington, in 1848, and 

 placed in his own herd in a stable near South Ferry. This cow, at first 

 famed for the abundance of her milk, soon sickened and died, and con- 

 veyed the infection to the other occupants of the building. From there- 

 it spread to other stables in the vicinity, and soon the whole of Brook- 

 lyn was involved. Among other places infected in this way were large 

 distillery stables in Skillman street, and there the disease was seen and 

 identified by the Massachusetts commissioners in 1863, having continued 

 uninterruptedly from the primary infection. 



The same conditions favored the survival and propagation of the dis- 

 ease then that obtain still in the same locality. Brooklyn suburbs were 

 much more open and extended than they are to-day; and on the open, 

 unbuilt lands the cattle from infected herds, turned out to pasture, 

 mingled freely with those from healthy herds and infected them. Then 

 the cattle from infected herds could be bought at reduced rates, 

 of which the dealers naturally availed, so that the panic among the 

 owners of infected stock operated with the cupidity of the dealers in 

 securing a speedy extension of the disease; dealers, too, soon discov- 

 ered that the farther they sent the infected animals from the vicinity 

 of diseased herds they could be sold with the less suspicion, and a pre- 

 mium was thus placed upon its diffusion. Then, it is not to be forgotten 

 that around all the adjacent cities, New York, Jersey City, Newark, 

 &c., there were the same common pasture grounds, which in summer 

 became mere infection-traps ; that dealers' stables entertaining sick and 

 healthy, in turn became hot-beds of infection ; that the habit of the 

 cow dealer, of sending out cows on trial and taking back the sick or 

 ill-doing animal, or sending it on, to a new place on further trial, all 

 contributed largely to the dissemination of the plague. In short, these 

 large cities around the port of New York presented, and still present, on 



