THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 59 



ssu-rifio-s of sirk cattle to furnish the virus to be inoculated, fortlie dis- 

 infection of buildings, &c., wheiv tin 1 inoculated cattle have been kei>t, 

 for the reinoculatiou of those which fail to take, for the inoculation of 

 new-born calves, for the erection of pens in which to operate on large 

 jmd wild herds, nor for the percentage of losses of cattle subjected to 

 the operation. The last item alone, at 2 per cent., would amount to not 

 less than $10,000,000 more. Finally, inoculation has failed to eradicate 

 lung plague from any country in which it has been attempted, though 

 for thirty years it has been in extensive practice, so that this work is to 

 be continued year after year upon the coming generations of animals, and 

 the plague is to be rendered permanent in our midst. Thus a perma- 

 nent tax of a grevious and altogether unnecessary kind would be im- 

 posed on the country. 



It may be claimed that it will not be necessary to inoculate all the 

 stock of the country, but only those of the infected States. This is con- 

 ceded as true at present, but it is denied that we can look forward to 

 any continuance of this restriction. The maintenance of the practice of 

 inoculation, even in the infected States alone, implies the permanent 

 preservation of the poison there, and such preservation entails the daily 

 risk of its spread to the West, and thence through all the channels of 

 the cattle traffic. Even independently of this there is at the margins of 

 the inoculated districts an ever present opportunity for a wider exten- 

 sion of the disease; so that apart from a sudden extension to our graz- 

 ing plains, there remains the probability of a continuous slow march of 

 the disease in that direction. 



In addition to all this is the fact that the persistence of this disease 

 is the occasion of the continued embargo on our European cattle trade. 

 We cannot, therefore, hesitate for a moment in advising a speedy extinc- 

 tion of the affection in preference to any mode of palliation of a disease 

 which is now costing between two and three millions per annum, and 

 promises in the future to cost incomparably more. It is simply a ques- 

 tion of spending at once a portion of whaf we now lose in any one year 

 by this disease, or submitting to a continuance of these losses and of 

 their cause. 



CONDITIONS IN WHICH INOCULATION IS ADMISSIBLE. 



While absolutely condemning inoculation as inapplicable to our own 

 particular case, we fully indorse the operation as a means of reducing 

 the losses or even of exterminating the lung plague under circumstances 

 differing from ours. For reducing the losses it is a commendable meas- 

 ure in infected, unfenced countries, such as the steppes of Europe and 

 Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. From the open pas- 

 ture lands of these countries it has been found impossible to eradicate 

 the disease, and the best alternative in the present state of our knowl- 

 edge is inoculation. By means of this the losses are reduced from 50 to 

 10 per cent., but it holds out no hope of a final riddance of the disease. 

 This same remark may be applied to countries that are necessarily the 

 recipients of large importations of cattle from infected regions over 

 which they have no control. So with large feeding (distillery) and dairy 

 stables, where very frequent changes of stock are imperative, and where 

 such stock can only be drawn from infected districts. In all these cases 

 there is a choice of evils, and of the two, inoculation is incomparably 

 the least. With us in the United States, on the other hand, we have a 



