184 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



March 



irl the cattle trade, all favorable to intercourse 

 between diiferent countries and the dissemi- 

 nation of contagious disease. 



Holland had long imported fat and milch 

 stock from the Rhine provinces and other 

 countries to the East. The malady was for 

 six years in Belgium before it entered Holland. 

 In 1835 it was transmitted from Guelderland to 

 Utrecht. It reached South Holland immedi- 

 ately afterwards, and prevailed especially near 

 the great cattle markets of Rotterdam and 

 Scheidam. It then appeared whenever and 

 •wherever infected cattle were introduced into 

 South Holland, the island of Zeeland, Dren- 

 the, Groningen, and Overyssel. 



By this time— 1810-''41 and 1842— circum- 

 stances favored an agitation for the repeal of 

 restrictions on free trade in cattle with Eng- 

 land. The barriers to contagious disease fixed 

 by our forefathers after the appearance of 

 rinderpest in England were at last removed by 

 Sir Robert Peel, and this caused the cattle 

 traffic to grow apace from Central Europe 

 through Holland to England. The great cat- 

 tle-feeding province of the Netherland, Fries- 

 land, was alone infected with the lung disease 

 when its people eagerly sought to supply Brit- 

 ish wants, and from that day to this has been 

 constantly the seat of the malady. 



Dutch stock first introduced the lung plague 

 into the south of Ireland. It appeared in 

 1842, in London. In 1843 English cattle 

 communicated the disease to Scotland, and 

 ever since, with the exception of a period of 

 cattle trade restrictions enforced for the pre- 

 vention of the Russian murrain, has been the 

 most widespread, as it has been, taking the 

 entire period of its ravages into consideration, 

 the most destructive of all maladies attacking 

 British cattle. 



From Holland the disease travelled to the 

 Cape of Good Hope, and from England at 

 various periods it was communicated to Swe- 

 den, Oidenburgh, the Australian colonies, and 

 other parts of the world. 



History of the Lung Plague in America. 



The first notice of the lung plague in the 

 United States dates back to 1843, when a 

 German cow, imported direct from Europe, 

 and taken from shipboard into a Boooklyn cat- 

 tle shed, communicated the disease, which, it 

 is said and believed, has prevailed more or 

 less in Kings county, Long Island, ever since. 



In 1847 Mr. Thomas Richardson, of New 

 Jersey, imported some English stock. Signs 

 of disease were noticed soon, and the whole 

 of Mr. Richardson's stock, valued at $10,000, 

 were slaughtered by him to prevent an exten- 

 sion of the plague. 



In 1850 a fresh supply of the lung-plague 

 poison reached Brooklyn from England in the 

 system of an imported cow. 



Mr. W. W. Chenery, of Belmont, Massa- 

 chusetts, has related the history of the intro- 

 duction of lung plague from Holland into 



Massachusetts in 1859. Four cows were pur- 

 chased for him at Purmerend and Beemster, 

 shipped at Rotterdam early in April on board 

 the barque J. C. Humphreys, which arrived 

 in America on the 23d of May, 1859. Two 

 of the cows were driven to Belmont ; the 

 other two had to be transported on wagons, 

 owing to their "extremely bad condition," 

 one of them "not having been on her feet 

 during the twenty days preceding her arrival." 

 On the 31st of May, it being deemed impos- 

 sible that this cow could recover, she was 

 slaughtered, and on the 2d of June following 

 the second cow died. The third cow sickened 

 on the 20th of June, and died in ten days. 

 The fourth continued in a thriving condition. 

 A Dutch cow, imported in 1852, was the next 

 one observed ill, early in the month of August 

 following, and she succumbed on the 20th. 

 "Several other animals were taken sick in 

 rapid succession, and then it was that the idea 

 was first advanced that the disease was iden- 

 tical with that known in Europe as epizootic 

 pleuro-pneumonia." Mr. Chenery the n did 

 all in his power to prevent the spread of dis- 

 ease from his farm. The last case at the 

 Highland farm, Belmont, occurred on the 8th 

 of January, 1860. 



In June, 1859, Curtis Stoddard, of North 

 Brookfield, bought three young cattle, one 

 bull and two heifers, from Mr. Chenery. One 

 calf showed signs of sickness on the way home. 

 Leonard Stoddard, father of Curtis, thinking 

 he could better treat this sick calf, took it to 

 his own barn, where he had forty-eight head, 

 exclusive of calves, and with which the calf 

 mingled. One animal after another was at- 

 tacked, till the 12th of April, when thirteen 

 head had died, and most of the remainder 

 were sick. The disease continued to spread 

 from farm to farm as rapidly as circumstances 

 favored the admixture of stock. The period 

 of incubation in well defined cases varied from 

 nineteen to thirty-six days, and averaged 

 twenty-six and two-thirds days. 



The people of Massachusetts, a little slow 

 at first, overcame the delays incident to legis- 

 lation, and established a commission for the 

 purpose of exterminating the disease. * * * 



From numerous inquiries there is not the 

 slightest doubt in my mind that the lung dis- 

 ease continued, ever since its first introduction, 

 to attack some of the numerous dairies on Long 

 Island. One of the best informed dairymen 

 in Brooklyn informed me that, three months 

 after starting in business, sixteen years ago, he 

 lost eleven out of twelve cows he had pur- 

 chased in Newark, New Jersey. He bought 

 more and began to inoculate with excellent re- 

 sults. Other people were losing, and he es- 

 tablished himself on Jamaica Pond to be clear 

 of every one. When he stopped inoculating 

 the disease reappeared. Mr. Benjamin Bab- 

 bit, of Lafayette avenue, was the first to in-, 

 oculate after the introduction of this practice 

 in Europe, and many dairymen adopted it. 



