216 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



diseased and exposed cattle, there would not be a case of 

 contagious pleuro-pneumonia in the United States to-day. 



The outbreak of lung plague in Massachusetts was not by 

 any means the date of its first importation into the United 

 States. It was first (according to the most reliable informa- 

 tion to be obtained) introduced into the country in 1848 

 from a cow purchased by Peter Dunn, a Brooklyn milkman, 

 from the captain of the English ship, Washington. This 

 cow soon sickened and died. Other cattle became diseased, 

 and the malady spread until it assumed its present vast 

 dimensions. It was not at first recognized as contajjious 

 pleuro-pneumonia, but was called " milk sickness," and was 

 supposed to be due to feeding cows on distillery slops, and 

 keeping them under the worst hygienic surroundings. The 

 disease spread through the distillery stables of Brooklyn, 

 over Long Island to Staten Island, to New Jersey, down the 

 coast into Maryland, the District of Columbia, and part of 

 Virginia near Norfolk ; it has also appeared in the neighbor- 

 hood of Philadelphia. It remained in these localities for 

 many years, because the traffic in cattle was always towards, 

 and never away from, these centres. Veterinarians have 

 constantly prophesied that it would some day get west of 

 the Alleghanies, and that means should be taken to extirpate 

 the disease before it was too late, and in return have been 

 ridiculed and derided by the New York dailies as " horse 

 doctors trying to create tat salaries for themselves by alarm- 

 ing the public." 



The prediction of the "horse doctors " was finally ful- 

 filled, and in 1884, contagious pleuro-pneumonia crossed the 

 Alleghanies with a lot of grade Jersey cows picked up 

 around Baltimore, and taken to Ohio to improve the butter 

 industry of that State. These cows were taken to Troy, 

 Ohio; thence the disease was carried to Dayton, Ohio, 

 where it was checked, and to Virginia, Illinois. From Vir- 

 ginia it was carried to a number of towns in the State, 

 among them Geneva. From Geneva it was conveyed to 

 three more towns in Illinois, and also to Cynthiana, Ken- 

 tucky. Later it spread also to Missouri. The Bureau of 

 Animal Industry, with the co-operation of the authorities in 

 the various States where it occurred, finally annihilated, — or, 



