THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 65 



dorsing the optimist views of sonic as to its decline in the East. The 

 Governor of New York, in liis minimi message, congratulates the State 

 a tlmt while the cattle disease, known as pleuro-pneumonia, which for- 

 merly menaced the tanners in this State, is not entirely eradicated, if 

 lias been confined to limited areas, and seems to bo gradually disap- 

 pearing. AVith a single exception, not likely to cause 1 further trouble, 

 the disease has been confined to a small portion of Long Island, and it 

 is hoped that it may be speedily and entirely eliminated from our terri- 

 tory." It is much to be regretted that the governor should have been 

 so tar misled. Helms in his regular em ploy no professional inspectors to 

 inquire into the status of the disease in the State, and manifestly trusts to 

 t lie owners of diseased herds to report to his office. Every one acquainted 

 with the disease knows that this is the last thing the city dairyman 

 would think of doing, and therefore thefact that no such reports have been 

 made by no means implies that the disease does not exist. This is well 

 illustrated by the fact that for thirty years, from 1848 to 1878, this 

 plague prevailed extensively in New York, Brooklyn, and adjacent dis- 

 tricts, yet its existence was not so much as suspected by the Executive 

 at Albany, by the New York State Agricultural Society, nor even by 

 the Metropolitan (New York) Board of Health. The former governor 

 took no action under the law which enjoined him to stamp out and cir- 

 cumscribe animal plagues, until the complaint of' lung plague in Ameri- 

 can cattle came from England in the end of 1878. The secretary of 

 the New York State Agricultural Society, in letters to the British con- 

 sul, dated January 24 and 25, 1879, expressed in the strongest terms his 

 belief that no such plague existed on the American continent. Finally 

 when the work of stamping out the plague was inaugurated in 1879, the 

 sanitary superintendent of the New York City Board of Health expressed 

 to one of our number (Professor Law), the opinion that he would find no 

 cases in the city of New York. This last opinion was based upon a 

 frequent inspection of the city dairy herds by medical members of the 

 board of health, so that the sanitary superintendent was presumably in 

 a far better position than is the present governor to pronounce upon the 

 condition of these herds. Yet investigation at that time showed that the 

 disease then prevailed most extensively throughout the whole of the 

 city, from Water street on the south to Yonkers on the north. 



Judged by the number of cows dying of disease it may be held that 

 the lung plague is decreasing in New York City, but inquiry in the 

 dairies shows that the sick are being disposed of for beef at the onset 

 of illness, in place of being kept until they die of the disease. A sick 

 cow was found abandoned in December, 1881, at Thirty-eighth street and 

 Eleventh avenue, but none of the dairymen in the vicinity would ac- 

 knowledge any ownership in the animal, nor that they had personally 

 lost any cows for a year or two. John Hearley, Eighty-sixth street and 

 Lexington avenue, keeps 5 cows, and had one sent to the oifal dock the 

 last week of November. On inquiry he acknowledged he had sold two 

 more sick to the butcher in the course of the same month. He found 

 it, he said, the most profitable course to turn them off for beef when 

 attacked with sickness. Mrs. Taylor, directly opposite on Lexington 

 avenue, also kept 5 cows, and she too confessed to having sent to the 

 butcher two cows that sickened on the course of November, 1881 . Kear- 

 ney, a few doors further up, keeps 7 cows, and makes no secret of the 

 fact that he turns off the sick to the dealer, and puts in others in place 

 of crowding bis stables with sick and profitless animals, which prevent 

 him from keeping a full remunerative stock. Mrs. Hurtin, Seventy- 

 first street and First avenue, keeps 7 cows, and claims that she has 

 S. Ex. 10< 



