24 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the food that the sick one had breathed upon ; and also of being 

 kept in the stable with one diseased cow through the whole 

 course of her sickness, with the exception of two or three days. 

 In about twenty days from the time the cow brought from 

 Maine was taken sick, Dr. Thayer told me she gave about the 

 same quantity of milk that she did before her sickness, which 

 certainly was a little singular, as every farmer knows that if, 

 from any cause, a cow falls off in her milk for any considerable 

 number of days it is not often she comes up to the same mark 

 without a change in the feed, and there was no change in this 

 case. 



Such are all the facts bearing upon the points named in the 

 first part of this Report which I have been able to gather. 

 Meagre, I know them to be ; so meagre that he must be a rash 

 man who would attempt to build any theory thereon. It would 

 seem to me that they rather tend to a disbelief in the present 

 popular theory in regard to the disease than to furnish the mate- 

 rial to build a new one. But I do not feel that I am wholly at 

 fault that they are so comparatively unimportant ; more than 

 once have I proposed that we call to our aid some man of 

 acknowledged medical skill and scientific ability. But all such 

 propositions have ever met with disapproval. It certainly is 

 consistent in him who has no faith in medicine to refuse to call a 

 physician, and equally so in him who believes he knows as 

 much as any one, to ask advice of others. 



• I do not hesitate to say then that the experiment at Newtonville 

 has proved of but comparatively little value. My associates have 

 no faith in the use of medicine for the disease, and still more, they 

 think that he who is not already satisfied that the only proper treat- 

 ment of a herd effected, is to have it immediately slaughtered, 

 is not worthy of the pains it would require to convince him. Men 

 having such views cannot be expected to carry on an experiment 

 with that interest necessary to elicit the truth ; nor can it be 

 expected that farmers who have their herds appraised at what 

 three disinterested men swear is a fair market value will make 

 much effort to prove they are worth keeping, when they know 

 that a majority of those who are to judge between them and the 

 State consider it worse than useless. 



It is asserted, and I suppose generally believed, that the 

 disease has no parallel in the human or brute creation. I 



