REPORT OF CATTLE COMMISSIONERS. 399 



the specific nature and characteristics of this disease were 

 described quite fully, and its origin and manner of propaga- 

 tion in this State, and our experience the present year has 

 only served to confirm the opinion then expressed. Its 

 outbreak here is very peculiar, and it is not as malignant and 

 fatal as in the Middle and Western States. Although it more 

 generally makes its appearance near our large villages and 

 cities, where the swill from hotels and boarding-houses is 

 carried into the country to be used as swine food, yet we 

 have quite frequently been called to cases in remote and 

 isolated localities, where all the animals were home bred and 

 contact with other herds impossible. The inference in such 

 cases is that the disease is sporadic rather than contagious, 

 or that a mistake has been made in the diagnosis. But our 

 oft-repeated post mortems, and those of the heads of our 

 veterinary colleges to whom specimens have been sent, prove 

 bej'ond a doubt that it is the true swine plague of the West ; 

 and, with few exceptions, we have been able to trace the 

 infection in these isolated localities to the travelling meat- 

 carts and to the markets from which Western pork is sold. 

 By strict isolation and acid treatment of the infected animals 

 we have been able in all cases to prevent the transmission of 

 the contagion to adjacent herds, and to save fifty per cent, 

 of them ; and were it not that the seed germs were brought 

 to us from week to week, the trouble would have ceased long 

 ago. Our law for the suppression of contagious diseases 

 among domestic animals was originally enacted only to meet 

 the great emergency caused by the outbreak of contagious 

 pleuro-pneumonia in 1860. Heroic treatment was believed 

 to be necessary in dealing with that fell disease, and great 

 powers, tending to the destruction of all infected herds, 

 were given to mayors and aldermen, to selectmen and com- 

 missioners. Doubtless the controlling purpose of the law 

 was to save the property of the general public from the 

 calamitous ravages of a spreading contagion, by killing and 

 paying for the healthy animals of a person who had been so 

 unfortunate as to have his cattle contaminated. In practice, 

 however, it was to a certain extent a measure of compensa- 

 tion to the owner for property which had already lost its 

 value ; for the tainted herd had no real market value, and a 



