66 THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 



lost none since she entered the business, but her boy confesses that she 

 sold one to the butcher, sick, in December., 1881, and a dead cow was 

 removed from the street adjacent to the offal dock in the same month. 

 A dairyman at Eighty-second street and Avenue A keeps 11 cows, 

 and claimed to have had no losses for two years. On being confronted 

 with the fact that he had sent a dead cow to the offal dock in Decem- 

 ber, 1881, he explained by stating that, having been sick, he gave her 

 3 pounds Glauber salts, which burned her lungs. These few items, se- 

 cured from the only dairies that could be seen in a very hurried visit, 

 sufficiently deny the optimist view that the disease has disappeared 

 from New York City. They show plainly that the lesson learned long 

 ago by the dairymen of the Old World, and more recently by those of 

 Washington, D. C., that it is unprofitable to keep a sick cow at a daily 

 loss when her place can be filled by a fresh one at a daily profit of $1.50 

 to $2 is now being learned by the milkmen of New York. The debt 

 and credit account on a good cow that is kept eight weeks in a city 

 dairy may be stated thus : 



Dr. 



Price of fresh cow $60 



Feed at $2 per week 16 



76 



Cr. 



Milk at $2 per day , .... $112 



Returned as sold, sick 15 



127 



76 



Profit .. 51 



It is easy to see how a remunerative business can be conducted in 

 spite of disease, and as a certain number of animals entirely resist the 

 contagion the profit is sometimes higher than is here indicated. The 

 system makes it difficult to find sick animals on the premises and does 

 away with the chronic cases, which under; other circumstances betrayed 

 the presence of the infection, but in the absence of any universal system 

 of disinfection it accomplishes little toward the eradication of the malady. 

 The system is in some respects rather calculated to perpetuate the 

 malady, for the constant changes and the steady influx of fresh and sus- 

 ceptible cows into the contaminated buildings, but adds fresh fuel to the 

 flame. 



Another point in the case that should not be lost sight of is that the 

 cows are usually sold not to the butcher direct, but to a dealer. When, 

 therefore, a dairyman wishes to dispose of his entire stock and begin 

 anew, the dealer slaughters only the fresh cows and sells to other dairy- 

 men the cows that have been exposed to infection, but which are still 

 apparently healthy. Thos. Kearney, Lexington avenue and Ninety-sixth 

 street, stated that one year he sold 15 cows sick from a standing stock 

 of 7, and that on one occasion he sent his whole 7 for sale to the Union 

 Stock Yards at Fifty-ninth street, and at once filled their places with 7 

 more. A second instance of the same kind, but related more in detail, 

 recently occurred on Staten Island. An infected herd belonging to a 

 nursery for children at Willow Brook, S. I., was bought by a Mr. Cut- 

 tier, of the same place, as sound animals. Discovering his blunder Mr. 

 Guttler killed 16 and sold 15 for slaughter to Maybaum, a dealer, at 

 $27.50 pej 1 head. A few days later Mr. Guttler saw one of the herd in 

 the stables of Messrs. Pero Brothers, New Brighton, where she had been 

 sent on trial. He remonstrated with Maybaum, who took the cow back, 

 but only to dispose of her anew at $05 to a dairyman at Long Neck, 

 who owned 9 other cows. Soon after the cow sickened and was sold 

 back to Maybaum for $25 and slaughtered. Since that time the whole 



