THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CA I ILK. 03 



knowledge during all these yours to l>e carefully investigated, and has 

 failed to find a single trace of lung plague. 



Prof. A. J. Murray, formerly of the New Veterinary College. Kdinhurgk, 

 and of the Cirencester Agricultural College, has spent fifteen years in 

 Detroit, Mich., and part of this time has hern State veterinarian, and who 

 is well acquainted with the lung plague as seen in Great Britain and on 

 the Kuropean continent, has never seen a single case of this malady in 

 Michigan. 



Drs. Somerville and Son, veterinarians in the great cattle center of 

 Buffalo, have not, in a forty years' residence, seen a single case of this 

 plague. Drs. Myers and Son, veterinarians in Cincinnati, have not, 

 in an equal length of time, seen any such case in that city. 



Dr. Farrington's report, hereto appended, furnishes similar evidence 

 from all the points visited, so that the sum of the evidence, past as well 

 as present, attests the entire freedom of the West and South from this 

 infection. 



In the course of our investigations it must be admitted that conta- 

 gious diseases of cattle have been met with Texas fever, tuberculosis, 

 anthrax, &c., but not a single case of lung plague. 



Dr. Thayer, investigated at East Rindge, N. H., a disease apparently 

 closely allied to anthrax, which killed off a herd with one exception, and 

 in which the lungs were sometimes congested and in other cases not. 

 At Southborough, Mass., he made a necropsy of a recently imported cow, 

 which showed hypostatic congestion of one luugbut the.real malady was 

 disease of the liver. At Pictou, Nova Scotia, he made inquiries into a 

 dropsical affection which prevails fatally in that region, but found that 

 it showed no lesions allying it to lung plague (see Report on Disease at 

 Pictou). 



Inflammatory and other diseases of the lungs are likewise met with 

 again and again, both in the East and West; but the symptoms, lesions, 

 and history in every case out of the well-known infected area showed the 

 disease to be distinct from the lung plague. 



On the occasion of a visit of the commission to the Chicago stock- 

 yards September 5, 1881, they were presented by the meat inspector 

 with a portion of a bullock's lung which he had secured that morning as 

 the one suspicious case out of the thousands slaughtered in the course 

 of a few days. In this the interlobular tissue was puffed up with air 

 to an average thickness of half an inch, and the surface being somewhat 

 dried and blanched it contrasted strongly with the red lobules, and the 

 whole to the casual glance presented a strong resemblance to the lesions 

 of lung plague. This, which has doubtless been often mistaken for the 

 genuine contagious disease when seen in the slaughter-house, we found 

 afterward to be a not uncommon condition of the lungs in swill-fed bul- 

 locks. The warm swill, often fed at 100 F. and even warmer, together 

 with the dense water vapor which rises from it, irritate the throat 

 and lungs, causing coughing, especially in the new-comers. In the 

 Chicago and Peoria swill stables cattle with a temperature of 103 and 

 104 F., with accelerated breathing and weak husky cough, were on ex- 

 amination found to be mainly affected with this interlobular emphysena. 



In other outbreaks of pulmonary inflammation in young cattle investi- 

 gated in New York and Iowa the cause was found in the myriads of 

 round worms (Strongylus micrurift) inhabiting the air tubes and lung 

 substance. 



In an outbreak of broncho-pneumonia in Duchess County, New York, 

 investigated by Professor Law, the case was very suspicious because of 

 its proximity to an infected area, because the diseased cattle were recent 



