THE LUNG PLAGUE. 33 



]S'ew York State, and is not indigenous on the Allcgbanies. It were a 

 much easier task to trace the mahKly to fertile valleys, where cattle are 

 often covered, as in Holland, to be protected from cold, and to towns 

 where animals are always in stables, than to trace the spontaneous 

 origin of the disease to the mountains of Central and Western Europe. 



FEEDING. 



There are many farmers, apt to reason on insufficient data, who notice 

 coincideuces between the development of the lung disease and great 

 increase in some countries in the number of distilleries, the amount of 

 grains and distillery waste fed to cattle. Others declare the disease 

 commenced with the potato disease, and may be produced by feeding 

 cattle on diseased potatoes. The introduction of turnip husbandry, 

 which undoubtedly first made us acquainted with a form of red water 

 in cows, and severe apoplectic affections in sheep, has also been regarded 

 as the cause in Great Britain, of the lung disease in cattle. Delafond 

 agrees that the foods named do not cause pi euro-pneumonia, and it would 

 be easy to fill a large volume with facts in support of this assertion; 

 and yet he goes on to say that food that is too succulent, distributed in 

 large quantity among cattle that are being stall fed, either for the 

 butcher or for the production of milk, may induce {pent occasioner,) 

 pleuro-pneumonia. 



We are not ignorant of the precise results which ensue when an 

 excessive quantity, inordinate richness, or diseased condition of the 

 alimentary matters named may operate in inducing ill effects. Diseased 

 potatoes induce indigestion and colic. Turnips grown on ill-drained 

 lands give rise to hematuria, the red water of cows after parturition. 

 Distillery products occasion diuresis, disturbed digestion, ami when 

 still charged with alcoholic principles give rise to cerebral disturbance, 

 apoplexy and death. These, and not pleuro-pneumonia, are known to us 

 as capable of development from the abuse of otherwise useful articles 

 of cattle feeding. 



STABLING — STALL FEEDING. 



Many have been the high-colored descriptions of the wretched 

 stables, sheds, or what the Scotch people term " byres," in which cattle 

 are housed. It matters not that for generations cattle were similarly 

 housed without suffering from pleuro-pneumonia. There are always 

 those ready to skim the surface for reasons, and, after noticing the close- 

 ness, filth, and torturing narrowness of cattle stalls, ascribe to that any 

 and every plague infecting the cow shed. It is needless to walk the 

 observer through the fetid holes in which cattle are kept for the sujjply 

 of milk in Copenhagen, where pleuro-pneumonia has not been observed, 

 nor to refer to the days when the London dairymen, richer in money 

 and cows, kept the latter worse, bred from them regularly, and could 

 3 



