26 THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 



2d. The readers of periodical literature will recall the fact that there 

 have been in New York during this time frequent outcries against 

 "swill milk," and these, together with the more formal reports of Dr. 

 Percy and Mr. Bergh, while mistaken in ascribing the disease in the 

 cows to swill-feeding, yet furnish valuable testimony as to the continued 

 existence of the malady. The cuts in Frank Leslie's paper representing 

 the swill-fed cow as stump-tailed supplies further indubitable evidence, 

 as the shortness of the tail was caused here, as elsewhere, by the prac- 

 tice of inoculation with the lung plague matter. This process often 

 gives rise to so much inflammation in the tail that that member either 

 separates spontaneously or has to be cut off to prevent such extension 

 of the disease as would destroy life. Yet, to add proof to proof the fol- 

 lowing two cases are named, out of many, to show the unbroken conti- 

 nuity of cases from the year of the importation of the plague-germ to the 

 present. 



3d. In 1849 William Meakim, Bushwick, L. I., kept a large dairy, 

 and employed a man, with a yoke of oxen, in drawing grains from the 

 New York and Brooklyn distilleries. A milkman on the way, who had 

 lung plague in his herd, persuaded this man to use his oxen in drawing 

 a dead cow out of his stable. Soon after, the oxen sickened and died, 

 and the disease extending to his dairy herd Mr. Meakim lost 40 head 

 in the short space of three mouths. From this time onward Mr. Meakim 

 lost from six to ten head yearly for twenty years, when he left the dairy 

 business. This brings the record down to 1869, covering the period of 

 1863, when Dr. E. F. Thayer, with the other members of the Massachu- 

 setts commission, saw and identified the disease in the Skillman-street 

 stables. From 1869 Professor Law can testify to its continuous existence, 

 having been consulted at intervals concerning valuable herds into which 

 the disease had reached from the generally infected stock of the region. 



4th. Dr. Bathgate, of Fordham avenue and One hundred and seventy- 

 first street, New York, says that twenty-three years ago (1858) his father 

 kept a herd of Jersey cattle, which became infected by contact with ad- 

 jacent infected herds, and that the malady continued to prevail in his 

 herd for years in spite of all his efforts to check it. From that date to 

 this he affirms it has never been absent from the district. 



IMMUNITY OF AMERICA APART FROM DISEASED IMPORTS. 



In the above connection it is not to be forgotten that for two centu- 

 ries and a half after the settlement of America the cattle of the settlers 

 remained free from any such contagious disease ; and it was only when 

 the infected English cow was landed in Brooklyn in 1848 that the pes- 

 tilence began which has since extended some three hundred miles due 

 south. More than this, for the immemorial ages during which the buf- 

 falo has roamed the American plains, no such disease has appeared 

 among the herds. For, be it noted, the buffalo belongs to the bovine 

 family, and here, as in Europe, is susceptible to this infection; and had 

 this pestilence once been introduced among them, it would have been 

 preserved forever by the constant mixing of herds and the birth of new 

 and susceptible animals, as it has been on the unfenced plains of Asia, 

 Europe, Africa, and Australia. 



INCLEMENT WEATHER HAS NOT GENERATED LUNG PLAGUE. 



It has often been charged that the plague has been generated by in- 

 clement weather, but the experience of froth America and Europe meets 



