488 Veterinary Medicine. 



except under the guarantee of the tuberculin test, repeated in six 

 months. The reacting animals, must be appraised, excluded 

 from the herd, and disposed of, it may be to the butcher to be 

 killed under official expert inspection, and the salvage, if any, to 

 be deducted from the appraised value ; or to be rendered and the 

 salvage estimated ; or to be buried as the case may be. In all 

 such cases the other animals (horses, pigs) that occupy the same 

 buildings and yards should be tested, although the risk of the 

 infection of cattle from these animals is comparatively small. 

 Unless in badly infected herds, steers and young cattle, which 

 can be kept in a separate herd need not be tested. Vermin must 

 be killed. Thorough disinfection must be applied to buildings 

 and yards, and the dairy herd must be retested at the end of every 

 six months until no more reactions are met with. 



In this way the campaign in any State can be begun with a 

 small staff, which may be steadily encreased as men are trained 

 to the work, and in no great length of time the dairying and 

 breeding herds can be purified and the investigation carried into 

 the more purely agricultural fields, where herds are small and 

 usually free from infection. Many minor points would require 

 the attention of a competent superintendent of the work. My 

 object here is to make a plea for the approved and attested method 

 which has never failed in the case of other animal infections on 

 enclosed farms, and which is based on the absolute destruction of 

 every seed of the disease in the area under sanitary control. The 

 method has the apparent drawback, that it demands a greater 

 relative outlay at the start, than do others proposed, but in view 

 of its certainty, and the confident hope of an early abolition of all 

 infection, loss, and expensive expert control, it must, in my 

 opinion, be looked upon here, as it has always proved in the past, 

 the course of the truest economy. It may be compared to the 

 treatment of a field of thistles by removing the offensive weeds, 

 root and branch, before they have advanced to seed, instead of 

 merely cutting them down with a mower, and leaving the roots, 

 to grow anew, to leaf, to blossom and seed, in spite of the 

 temporary partial drawback. But as the prospect of early legisla- 

 tion along this line is not a bright one, the expert must accom- 

 modate his aims and efforts to what can be done under the existing 

 laws. 



