228 CONTAGIOUS LUNG FEVER OF CATTLE. 



task, wliicli notliing but the imperative sense of duty would compel us to undertake. 

 But this disease has a history, whicli we can only ignore at our peril ; and as its records 

 can now be drawn from all quarters of the globe, Ave can have before us an unequivo- 

 cal testimony as to what wiU inevitably happen under given conditions of climate, 

 Burroundings, and treatment. 



England imported the limg fever of cattle in 1842, just one year before wo did, was 

 soon very generally infected, and has contmued so to the present time. Up to 1869, it 

 is estimated that England had lost, ahnost exclusively from this disease, 5,549,780 head 

 of cattle, worth £83,616,854 (say $400,000,000). For the succeeding nine years, up to 

 1878, the losses have been, in the main, as extensive, so that we may set them down as 

 now reaching at least $500,000,000 in deaths alone, without counting all the contin- 

 gent expenses, of deteriorated health, loss of markets, progeny, crops, manure, &c., 

 disinfection, quarantine, &c. With us no attempts have been made to estimate the 

 losses, but they cannot exceed an inconsiderable fraction of those above named ; and 

 thus we have slept on in a pleasant dream of immunity. 



It is even alleged that the disease has, in a great measure, been shorn of its virulent 

 power, by being transplanted to the shores of the New World, and that we may com- 

 fort ourselves with this, and continue to ignore its presence. If, on the other hand, it 

 can be shown that the difference is in no material respect affected by climate, but 

 altogether determined by the surroundings, it will be well for us to attend to the facts 

 of the case, and face the real danger. The lung fever, which had really entered Eng- 

 land, by a special importation, some time before the free trade act of 1842, was, by 

 virtiie of this act, thrown upon her in constantly accumulating accessions. The ports 

 at which the continental cattle were landed, and the markets in which they were sold 

 — London (Smithfield Market), Southampton, Dover, Harwich, Hull, Newcastle, Edin- 

 burgh, &c. — insured the mingling of the imported stock, week by week, with the 

 native store cattle. Then, if they failed to find a profitable sale, they were sent by 

 cars to other and inland markets, where they were again and again brought into con- 

 tact with numerous herds of store cattle, by which the germs of the disease were taken 

 in, and carried all over the country. 



With us, on the other hand, the disease was long confined to the dairies of Brooklyn 

 and New York, where the cows were kept until they died, or were fattened for the 

 butcher. A few doubtless found their way to the country, and by these the disease 

 was carried to different farms, which were thus constituted centers of contagion from 

 which the adjacent country became infected. But any such movement from the city 

 dairies was necessarily of the most restricted kind, and it never took place to any great 

 distance. It would have been folly to move a common milch cow, worth i|40 to $70, 

 to the West, where she could be bought for one-half or one-third of that sum. The 

 same deterrent condition existed in the case of the farms on which the diseased city 

 cows had been brought. Sales were no doubt occasionally made from infected herds, 

 to secure the apparent value of an animal which the owner had good reason to believe 

 to be doomed, and as such animals would, for obvious reasons, be sent as far from 

 home as possible, this became a principal means of the formation of more distant cen- 

 ters of contagion and the wider diffusion of the malady. But with us the disease has 

 hitherto had to fight against the heaviest obstacles — the ciuTcnt of cattle traffic hav- 

 ing been ahnost without exception from the cheaply-raised herds of the West to the 

 profitable markets of the East. The exceptions have only been in the case of thorough- 

 bred stock, and hitherto oiu- Western stock has escaped contamination by this means. 



The wonder is not so much that the plague has failed to reach the West, but that in 

 the face of such tremendous obstacles it has succeeded in invading all of the six or seven 

 States that are now infected. In Great Britain, where some would have us believe 

 that the disease is more virulent, we can point to a more satisfactory record. There 

 the great body of the country has been infected for thirty-five years, but the greater 

 jiart of the highlands, exclusively devoted to the raising of cattle and sheep, has en- 

 joyed the most iierfect immunity. Here, under nearly all possible predisposing causes 

 of lung disease — altitude, exposure, cold, chilling rains, and fogs, the piercing blasts 

 of the Atlantic and German Oceans — this contagious lung disease has never penetrated, 

 though severely ravaging the lowlands immediately adjacent. The explanation is, 

 that these hills support none but the native black cattle, and other breeds are never 

 introduced. In spite of the alleged virulence of the disease in England, it has proved 

 powerless to enter this magic circle from which all but the native stock is excluded. 

 The same holds true concerning some parts of Normandy, Brittany, the Channel 

 Islands, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, &c. 



The fact that the disease has maintained a foothold among us for thirty-four years, 

 and in spite of all obstacles has made a slow but constant extension, is suflicicnt 

 groimd for the gravest apprehensions. A disease-poison which shows such an obsti- 

 nate vitality and such persistent aggressiveness cannot be allowed to exist among us 

 without the certainty of future losses which Avill eclipse those of Great Britain by as 

 much as our herds of cattle exceed those of that nation. A recent outbreak in Clin- 

 ton, N. J., caused by a cow brought from Ohio, suggests the possibility of the disease 



