378 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



the previous year. There have been cases of suspects and 

 others of actual disease which have come to our knowledge. 

 Some of our citizens (as all should) have a great dread of 

 this disease as a source of danger to themselves ; and, when 

 informed by a competent veterinarian that they have an 

 animal infected by it, they cause it to be killed at once and 

 their premises to be disinfected, without notifying their 

 Board of Health, as the law requires, and for not doing 

 which it provides a penalty. As the purpose of the law is 

 attained by such a course of action, and more quickly than 

 it could be by notification and the action of the Board of 

 Health and the commissioners, no legal complaints have 

 been made. Yet such a course cannot be recommended or 

 approved, though pursued by those who from principle are 

 law abiding, and desire to see the object secured for which 

 the law is enacted. But all are not thus loj^al and kindly 

 disposed. Some of our citizens, possessing animals which 

 for good reasons have follen under suspicion, neither cause 

 them to be killed or notify their local officials, but " shove 

 them ; " and we have reason to believe there have been cases 

 where such acts have been aided or encouraged by members 

 of the veterinary profession. In combating this disease, the 

 course which is the best for the whole community, which in 

 the long run will he most successful, is that which will be in 

 harmony with the letter as ^vell as the spirit of the law. We 

 usually find this disease in sporadic form, but nearly every 

 year meet with what might be called centres of infection, 

 because of their greater frequency. The present year such 

 centre has been in Fall River and its vicinity, but at the 

 present writing the disease there appears to he subdued. 



Early in the year letters from Illinois informed us that 

 one hundred mares, which were supposed to be infected with 

 a contagious disease technically known as Maladie du Coit, 

 had been shipped to Massachusetts for sale, and warning us 

 against them. If the animals came here, we have been unable 

 to find them as shipped, or Avith certainty a single animal of 

 the lot. In all essential particulars lesions of this disease 

 are like venereal diseases in humans, and perpetuated in the 

 same way. The history of the disease indicates that first 

 and last it has caused much sufi'erinij and inflicted jrreat 



