INTRODUCTION. 3 



An abundant supply of good meat in the country is one of the 

 greatest desiderata, and any special knowledge which will aid 

 such an indispensable condition of our progress as a nation must 

 be hailed with feelings of relief and rejoicing. Moreover^ it is 

 not too much to say that bovine medicine and bovine surgery 

 take a rank quite equal to that of equine medicine and surgery 

 in regard to their influence on one of the most important sciences 

 of the day — that of comparative pathology. 



As an illustration of what we have been saying as to the great 

 importance to the country of a thorough knowledge of the dis- 

 eases of cattle, we may note what Professor John Gramgee, whose 

 work on the The Cattle Plague is one of great power, wrote as 

 to the prevention of this dreadful scourge. Of the disease itself 

 we shall have to speak in its right place ; but here we may re- 

 peat the following remarks taken from the preface of the above- 

 mentioned admirable treatise : — 



" The points on -which I have specially had to contend," he says, " with not a 

 few opponents, were at first the foreign origin of the malady, the impossibility 

 of its spontaneous development in the London dairies, the insufficiency of any 

 remedy or class of remedies, the folly of estabhshing cattle hospitals or sana- 

 toria, the importance of regulating and controlling the traffic in live stock, 

 stopping all movement when the disease appeared, and prohibiting importation 

 from Holland, or establishing foreign stock-markets and slaughter-houses. I 

 have advocated a system of national insurance or one of indemnity, of slaughter 

 of the sick and infected animals. I was not in favour of the recommendation of 

 the majority of the Cattle Plague Commissioners, inasmuch as stopping the 

 entire traffic of the country without ' stamping out ' the disease could not serve 

 our purpose. A recommendation that Parhament should be at once summoned, 

 that inspectors should continue the practice of slaughtering, backed with funds 

 to indemnify owners — all in addition to stopping the traffic — would, in my 

 opinion have been more rational and less embarrassing to Government than the 

 suggestion which could not be, as indeed it was not, carried into effect." 



Thus wrote, in 1866, the man who did so much to suppress 

 the traffic in diseased animals and to secure a rational system for 

 the prevention of disease. 



In connection with this same terrible disease — cattle plague — 

 we will quote also the words of Dr. Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S., words 

 which, we may add, are, albeit that great discoveries have since 

 been made, still as applicable, as they were at the time when he 

 wrote, to disease in general : — "Thorough, prolonged, and thought- 

 ful scientific investigation seems now the only course open to 

 us, and that ought to be prosecuted by many, and in earnest." 



As to the cause of cattle plague, it may be here incidentally 



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