2 THE FARM DOCTOR. 



In the first half of the eighteenth century, it is estimated that 

 200,000,000 head of cattle perished in Europe in connexion 

 with the Austrian v/ars. These plagues again entered Italy 

 in 1793 with the Austrian troops and in three years carried off 

 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 cattle in that peninsula. More recently 

 rapid railroad and steamboat traffic and extended commerce 

 have taken the place of war in favouring their diffusion. Free 

 trade between England and the Continent snice 1842 has 

 cost the former ;j^i 15,000,000 in thirty years, and as much as 

 ;^io,ooo,ooo in 1865-6 during the prevalence of the Rinderpest 

 A similar importation cost Egypt 300,000 head of cattle (nearly 

 the whole stock of the country), in 1842, and others have 

 caused ruinous but unestimated losses in Australia, Cape of 

 Good Hope, and South America. On the other hand, some 

 of the most exposed countries of Europe, Norway, Sweden, 

 Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, and 

 Switzerland have long kept clear of these plagues by the 

 simple expedient of excluding all infected animals or their 

 products, and promptly stamping out the disease by the 

 slaughter of the sick, followed by thorough disinfection, when 

 they have been accidentally introduced. Exclusively breeding 

 districts, in Spain, Portugal, Normandy, and the Scottish 

 Highlands, into which no strange cattle are ever imported, also 

 keep clear of nearly all of these destructive pestilences. 



It is unquestionable that the animal plagues are propagated, 

 in Western Europe and America, only by the disease germs 

 produced in countless myriads in the body of a diseased 

 animal and conveyed from that to the healthy. It follows that 

 the destruction of the infected subjects and the thorough 

 disinfection of the carcass, manure, buildings, etc., is the most 

 economical treatment of all the more fatal forms of contagious 

 disease in live stock. For the less fatal forms, the most 

 perfect separation and seclusion, and the thorough disinfection 

 of all with which they have come in contact is still imperative- 



