PART III. 

 THE MEAXS OF PREYEXTIOX. 



A NATIONAL VETERINARY POLICE SYSTEM. 



AsroE from those animal diseases which are transmissible to 

 man, there are contagious animal diseases which are limited to spe- 

 cial species. We have now well domesticated with us one of the 

 very worst of these evils — contagious pleuro-pneumonia of cattle. 

 It is not my purpose to enter into any historical notice of this dis- 

 ease, either in Europe or this country. Its first most extensive rav- 

 ages were felt here, in Massachusetts, between 1860 and 1SG8, the 

 disease being finally crushed out at a cost of some sixty thousand dol- 

 lars. In September, 1879, I received a letter from one of the com- 

 missioners of the State of New York for the suppression of this dis- 

 ease, in which he says that over five hundred diseased cattle had 

 already been killed by the autliorities, and some seven hundred 

 more, which were either suspected or had surely been exposed to 

 infection, causing an actual loss, exclusive of the ofiicial expenses, 

 of not less than fifty or sixty thousand dollars. 



Tliis disease has now spread over many of our seaboard States, 

 being domesticated surely as far north as Connecticut, and as far 

 south as Northern Virginia. It has not as yet been sufficiently 

 proved that it has crossed the Alleghany Mountains, but, unless 

 our people wake up to the urgencies of the case, it will surely ex- 

 tend to the herds of the AVest, and then we can give up all ho[)c of 

 ever becoming free from it. A peculiarity of this disease, which it 

 enjoys in common with glanders, is the insidiousness of its course 

 during its early stages. An animal may be diseased for weeks, or 

 even months, without showing any striking indications that a dis- 

 ease having such a truly devastating character is progressing within 

 it. During all this time it is capable of infecting others. The fol- 

 lowing report, taken from the " Turf, Field, and Farm," January 



