58 THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 



dangerous expedient. Knowing what we do of the city cow stables and 

 country barns that would be infected by a general adoption of inocula- 

 tion, we feel confident that any perfect disinfection of these would en- 

 hance the cost of inoculation beyond all expectation. Then again it 

 would be next to impossible to make such a disinfection sufficiently 

 thorough to give assurance of safety. The removal and disinfection of 

 all hay, straw, and other fodder, the destruction of all rotten wood, the 

 removal of wooden floors, and of the saturated earth beneath them, the 

 reinoculation of all subjects that fail to take at the first attempt, the 

 rigid quarantine of the herds for thirty days or more, until the effects of 

 the inoculation had passed off, the inoculation of all calves born in such 

 herds, and of all cattle introduced into them, witb the repetition of 

 quarantine and disinfection, and the maintenance of sick animals and 

 infected places for the production of the necessary virus, would render 

 the measure far more costly, unwieldly, and uncertain than at first sight 

 appears. In the method of extinguishing the disease by the destruc- 

 tion of the sick and disinfection of the premises, the disinfection is only 

 demanded where the sick animals and their products have been. In 

 such circumstances, and with comparatively but a limited number of in- 

 fected places, the question of perfect disinfection is not always easy to 

 solve. But with a general inoculation every bovine animal becomes an 

 infected animal, and every building pr place where such an animal has 

 been, becomes an infected place. To take even a single city like that of 

 Brooklyn, with its thousands of herds kept in all sorts of out-of-the.way 

 places, with many of the owners unfavorable to governmental interfer- 

 ence, and inclined to throw obstacles in the way, it would be an exceed- 

 ingly difficult process ; but when extended to country districts where 

 cattle are often turned out in woods and swamps, where it is exceed- 

 ingly difficult to find them, it would be inevitable that numbers would 

 be overlooked and missed, as Mr. Watson confesses them to have been 

 in Australia, to be infected later by the inoculated cattle in the same or 

 adjoining inclosures, and to keep up the supply of virus for the infection 

 of new-born calves and fresh purchases. We can easily adduce instan- 

 ces in which inoculated cattle in cities were allowed to pasture on the 

 commons in company with other herds, and others in the country in 

 which the inoculated cattle were separated from neighboring cattle by a 

 rail fence only. Any one who has had to do with the quarantining of 

 cattle on the parole of the owner knows how often slips are made and 

 contact is allowed between the stock which are nominally secluded and 

 those of others. The danger thus arising in a limited number of cases 

 under the process of stamping out by slaughter of the sick, would be in- 

 creased a hundred fold by inoculation though this were confined to in- 

 fected localities only. 



But the increase of such risks implies a corresponding increase of in- 

 fected places and of the demand for disinfection ; and as a certain num- 

 ber of outbreaks are always secreted, and those that take place by eva- 

 sion of the law are pretty certain to be so, it would be practically im- 

 possible to carry the disinfectants along every channel of the stream of 

 contagion. 



EXPENSE OF A GENERAL INOCULATION. 



At 15 cents per head, which is far below the cost estimated by the 

 advocates of inoculation, inoculation of the 40,000,000 head of American 

 cattle would amount to $6 ; 000,000. But this does not provide for the 



