38 THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 







liad already been there for several years, her owner having served under 

 the previous farmer prior to 1S46. She could not have contracted 

 the malady from other stock on the place, for they all, with -hardly an 

 exception, contracted the disease later, which they" could not have done 

 had they already suffered, for in this disease, as in small-pox and measles, 

 one attack fortifies the system against a second. There was no risk of 

 her infection by passing cattle, as the stock were at the time (winter) 

 confined to the buildings, and no public road came within a consid- 

 erable distance of the latter. A bull was kept on the farm, so that 

 neither this cow nor others were sent off:' for service. The malady could 

 not have been contracted from the feeding oxen on the Pleasauts, for 

 these were West Highlanders, from a breed and district unknown to 

 the lung plague ; therefore they could not be suspected of carrying old 

 encysted masses of diseased lung in the chest. Moreover, as already 

 stated, almost all subsequently contracted the disease. The other cows 

 on the farm were separated from the steward's cow by the feeding courts ; 

 they had all been a length of time on the farm, and, like the oxen, were 

 some time later in showing the disease. The facts will bear but one ex- 

 planation that the Pitcox herdsman carried the infection in his clothes 

 to his father's cow. One of our number (Professor Law) lived on the 

 Pleasants at the time, and can attest the facts. 



2d. William Walker, of Quincy, Mass., was present at Squantum 

 when cattle suffering from lung plague were slaughtered by order of the 

 State commissioners. He closely examined portions of the diseased 

 lungs, and walked through the blood of the .slain animals. He then 

 rode home, a mile and a half, went to his barn, and fed his cattle. These 

 soon after sickened with lung plague. He sold two of his cattle to E. 

 B. Taylor, and of his herd of twenty-one all but three fell victims to the 

 pestilence. This is attested by Dr. Thayer. (See Report of Cattle 

 Commissioners of Massachusetts for 1863.) 



3d. In February, 1879, Ditmas Jewel, of East New York, took an active 

 part in opposing the work of the State officials dealing with lung plague, 

 and daily visited several of the infected herds. He also paid much at- 

 tention to a favorite Jersey cow, which he kept alone in his stable sur- 

 rounded by ample grounds. Toward the end of March this cow sickened 

 and died of lung plague, a victim of its owner's ill-considered visitations 

 of the sick. 



4th. In July, 1879, William Tice, of Columbusville, Newtown, Queens 

 County, New York, employed two men who had been working in Ellis's 

 stables, one of the most infected places in Brooktyu. These men slept 

 in the barns with the cattle. In September, two mouths after the men's 

 arrival, lung plague broke out among Tice's stock, and has continued 

 uninterruptedly until the present day (1882). 



In this connection it is only just to notice that it is not at all improbable 

 that this affection should be carried out to our western herds in the germ- 

 laden clothes of a workman employed about cattle. If the infection can 

 be carried in the clothes of persons walking or riding a mile or two in 

 the open air, if it can be preserved for months in the dried condition in 

 infected buildings, if it can retain its virulence for over a month shut up 

 in a glass tube in liquid condition, what is to hinder its preservation in 

 a closely-packed trunk for the three days of a railway journey ? Infec- 

 tion carried in this way would most likely be set down as a spontaneous 

 development seeing that no cattle had been carried that way; and yet 

 this is likely to hapx>en at any time so long as we tolerate the existence 

 of a single infected center or a single infected animal in the country. 



