No. 4.] CATTLE COMMISSIONERS. 458 



coined from the English language, to arrest public attention 

 and direct it to an impending calamity ; whereas, the fact of 

 the disease, and all the details of its development and results, 

 were thoroughly well known and understood hundreds of 

 years before their grandfathers were born. It may not have 

 been classed among contagions ; but, if it is contagious now, 

 it always was, and always was as dangerous as now, no more 

 and no less. In truth, as many facts can be gathered #to 

 prove that it is not contagious, as can be found to prove that 

 it is. But we will admit it to the list of contagions. What 

 then? Contagions differ amazingly in their virility, cer- 

 tainty and mode of transmission, ease with which they may 

 be resisted, period of incubation, etc. Tuberculosis in action 

 is one of the weakest, slowest and most easily averted of any 

 known. When compared with small-pox, yellow fever, 

 measles or diphtheria in man, or foot and mouth disease, 

 Spanish fever, or contagious pleuro-pneumonia in cattle, it 

 hardly deserves to be called a contagion. Rare indeed are 

 the cases of it, both in men and cattle, where the causes of 

 it cannot be traced directly to colds resulting from sudden 

 changes of temperature, confinement in foul air without suit- 

 able ventilation, and these combined with weakened vitality, 

 caused by over-breeding, over-working and improper feed- 

 ing ; and this, it is to be noted, is where the principle of this 

 contagion, if it has played any part in the calamity, cannot 

 by any possibility be traced to an origin in any other animal. 

 As a simple contagion, therefore, or because it is consid- 

 ered such, it is not to be accepted as a " dread disease." As 

 a contagion, it has a germ floating in air, swimming in water, 

 or concealed in our food ; but there is no occasion to be 

 " appalled" on that account, for the same is true of measles, 

 chicken-pox, diphtheria and other diseases, and this is the 

 weakest in vitality, and more dependent on a variety of extra- 

 neous circumstances for its development than any of them. 

 True, if a contagion, it has a germ or seed ; but, that it may 

 grow and cause what is called disease, it must be planted in 

 ground fitted for its reception by a union of many of the con- 

 ditions which have been named, and over which we have 

 nearly perfect control. It has a germ which can be found by 



