THE LUNG PLAGUE. 51 



giving tlie <animal time to swallow. I remember, as far back as 1851 , 

 being asked by a Yorkshire veterinarian to prepare a nnniber of 

 draughts, the active agent of which was carbonate of ammonia, for a 

 herd of cows affected with the lung disease. The draughts were sup- 

 l)lied to the farmer, and the very first day they were being administered 

 by himself and servants, according to order, in gruel, a messenger sum- 

 moned me to attend an animal which had been killed by the medicine. 

 On arriving at the farmer's, I perceived from the aninml's breathing, 

 tremors, difficulty in standing, anxious expression of countenance, pro- 

 truding and blood- shot eye-balls, that it was choking. I informed the 

 farmer of the fact that the drench had been poured the wrong way, and 

 since he was indignant at the declaration, I opened the trachea with my 

 penknife, and in a fit of coughing a quantity of gruel, smelling strongly 

 of ammonia, was forcibly ejected. This alone saved the reputation of the 

 medicine and its compounder. 



INOCULATION OF THE LUNG PLAGUE. 



In 1S3G pleuropneumonia was imported from Flanders among cattle 

 fed at the distillery of Messrs. Willems & Platel, at Hasselt, in Bel- 

 gium. The town was rich in horned stock, and the maladj' formed one 

 of its fixed stations, and continued uninterru.ptedly from 183G to 1852. 

 Dr. Didot* ascertained beyond a doubt, by personal inquiries among the 

 Hasselt distillers, that this was a fact, and that the disease had never 

 been absent from their stables during these sixteen years. The Belgian 

 government had adopted a partial system of slaughter to stamp out the 

 disease ; but the indemnity was small, and the distillers found it more 

 X)rofitable to sell their cattle to butchers ; and the inhabitants of Hasselt, 

 Liege, Louvaiu, Terlemont, Brussels, and Antwerp, were supplied with 

 a large amount of diseased meat. Dr. Didot learned that whereas gov- 

 ernment officials slaughtered one or two per cent, of the infected ani- 

 mals, the butchers purchased and disposed of fifteen, twenty, or twenty- 

 five animals per week, according to the extent of the outbreaks. In the 

 tovai of Hasselt alone it is computed by the same authority that 16,540 

 head of sick cattle were consumed during the above period. The gov- 

 ernment paid one-third of the value of 815 head of cattle during the same 

 j)eriod. So late as 1851 M. Maris, one of the government veterinary 

 surgeons at Hasselt, saw 1,300 cases of limg disease in that city alone. 



From 1810 to 1850t the value of the horned stock lost by pleuro-pneu- 

 monia in Belgium amounted to 2,531,109 francs and 30 cents. The sum 

 paid by the government in indemnities amounted to 1,751,777 francs and 

 40 cents. The disease continued unabated in 1851 and 1852. Every 

 effort had been made by the distillers to arrest the disorder — ventiUi- 



* Denx Jonrs h Hcasselt. Essai sur L'liioculatioii dc la rieuro-piieumouic Ex,sudativc 

 ties Botes Bovines. BnixellcH, 1853. 

 t Kapport (I6cenual de 1840 it, 1850. R6Hiim6 8tati^stiquc. Page 10. 



