OF THE OX. 223 



and consisting of medical and veterinary doc- 

 tors, might have been formed conjointly with 

 the former, and every preventive measure, 

 considered by them as necessary to stamp out 

 the complaint at the outbreak, after it had 

 been proposed by the medical board, and sub- 

 mitted to the executive commission, and by 

 them to the Home Secretary, might have been 

 acted upon by law within twenty-four hours. 



Taken unawares, and the mode of treating 

 the sick animals not being known at first, 

 they would have been reduced to the cruel 

 necessity of exterminating at once all tainted 

 cattle, as well as those belonging to tainted 

 herds, but not without compensating the 

 owners of those cattle.* 



They would have sent two physicians to 

 Eussia and Hungary, to observe and study 

 the preventive and curative medication, espe- 

 cially their mode of inoculation, and thanks to 

 the rapid locomotion of these times, twenty 

 days would have been sufficient for this foreign 



* The typhus which broke out fifteen days ago near 

 Roubaix, in France, bordering- upon Belgium, where the 

 epizootia rages, appears to have been stifled in its focus 

 by the instantaneous extermination of the whole herd in 

 which it declared itself. 



