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The Commissioners mention the decrease of the 

 disease since the slaughtering- as a proof of the 

 advantages of it. They say nothing about the 

 observations in their previous report, that in spring 

 these diseases always diminish and often completely 

 die away in the summer. Mr. Gamgee said that 

 two months of slaughter would annihilate the plague. 

 There have been more than two months' slaughter, 

 and there are about two thousand fresh cases every 

 week, notwithstanding spring to help. Then comes 

 what the Commissioners seem to think a grand con- 

 clusion, of the greatest importance, that they have 

 quite established, namely, that the plague is caused 

 by a specific poison. To be sure, as they allow, 

 chemical tests fail to discover the poison, and a 

 microscope so powerful as to make a child three feet 

 hig-h look as big as Mont Blanc failed also. Now, 

 what is all this but saying with much pomposity, 

 in many words, what none have ever doubted, 

 namely, that some diseases are catching, but how or 

 why nobody knows. Then we have a long story 

 about how a drop of diseased blood will infallibly 

 communicate the disease by inoculation. I wonder 

 whether the Commissioners really believe that this 

 is only true in the case of this Rinderpest, and not 

 equally true of every kind of malignant fevers, or, 

 as I think they used to be called, putrid fevers; 

 that it is not equally true of famine fevers, jail 

 fevers, Oriental plague, small pox, ship fevers, camp 

 fevers, and every form and variety of those typhus 



