126 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



ests of his employers rather than apply rigid measures of extiuctiou for 

 the good of the commonwealth, the fact that he may be an excellent 

 general practitioner and yet not a specialist in epizootics, who may coun- 

 sel treatment when the best sanitary science imperatively demands sac- 

 rifice, who will make a dangerous distinction between farcy and glan- 

 ders, or who will ])refer preventive inoculation in pleuropneumonia to 

 slaughter. What can be exi)ected of the veterinarian who has become 

 hopeless and apathetic, whose calling is to him but a handicraft, or who 

 has become morally debased ? 



The increasing numbers of live stock, the facility in transporting them 

 long distances by steam, and the great demands of Western Europe for 

 outside supplies demand for the inspector of to-day a very ditt'erent 

 official from those of the past. The lack of a thoroughly eflicieut vet- 

 erinary sanitary service was felt when the lung plague attained such a 

 wide extension in 1840, when the Kinderpest ravaged Holland and 

 Euglaud in 1805, and France in 1870, when influenza spread over 

 America in 1872, lung plague in 1878, or when hog cholera destroyed in 

 a single state hogs to the value of $20,000,000 in one year. 



Already a good beginning has been made in difiterent states. Hol- 

 land has nine district veterinarians under state salary. France has in 

 the department of the Seine live exclusively occupied in the state serv- 

 ice : England has twenty-three salaried port inspectors; Portugal has 

 twenty-one on state salaries, not large enough, however, to make them 

 independent of practice, and the same applies to the states of Cler. 

 many and Austria where the Government veterinary officers have reg- 

 ular salaries, but insufficient for their entire maintenance. 



The held with which a departmental veterinarian is charged should 

 be large enough to insure that the office shall be no sinecure, and that 

 he shall not by private practice interfere with that of the local veteri- 

 narians. He should be appointed after a special examination, or excep- 

 tionally for signal services in sanitary police. 



The department veterinarian should counsel the central authorities, 

 advise legislation, take the direction in the prevention and extinction 

 of epizootics, and direct the work of the local veterinarians. To these 

 last would be left the inspection of fairs and markets, meat markets, 

 slaughter-houses, &c.. of animals sent by railroad, and the general local 

 work of the service. They should make to the chief veterinarian writ- 

 ten reports of any extraordinary occurrence in their district and ])eriodic 

 reports of the general work accomplished. These will furnish data for 

 the publication of statistics of the animals kept, bred, purchased, sold, 

 killed for food, dying of sporadic and epizootic disease, attacked by epi- 

 zootics, «&c. Tliese in relation to geology, soil, drainage, meteorology, 

 culture, breeds, breeding, alimentation, use, &c., will supply data of 

 thegreatest value to stockholders, veteriiuirians, hygienists, physicians, 

 dealers, and jtolitical economists. 



As a rule the destruction of animals to arrest an epizootic should be 



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