PLEUBOPXEUMONIA. 609 



careful study. It has been well proved that epizootics, like 

 epidemics, disappear if permitted to do so, and if they are 

 not encouraged by facilitating contagion, &c. It is also 

 easily demonstrated that the United Kingdom is naturally 

 the most healthy portion of Europe, and in which cattle 

 plagues are only seen as the result of importation. The 

 very diseases which prove so destructive now visited us last 

 century, but trade was not so active, importations were few, 

 and the disorders disappeared. 



The veterinary profession in this country has not 

 hitherto turned its attention to the great questions which 

 affect our national prosperity, and which are purely veterin- 

 ary in their nature. We must do more than learn how to 

 physic, blister, and operate: we must study prevention. 

 This is the great field for future workers and for men of 

 science, trained to the investigation of laws governing health 

 and disease. Let us not turn a deaf ear to the statements of 

 the London dealers and cowfeeders, who say that all the 

 disease is imported, that it all spreads through markets; let 

 us not shut our eyes to the evident fact, that the great 

 centres of disease in this country are those in direct com- 

 munication with the centres of importation, and where dis- 

 eased cattle are freely bought and sold. We are armed with 

 knowledge, and we are armed with means to prevent even 

 such a disease as pleuro-pneumonia. The requirement of 

 the age is enlightened action, but the curse of the past has 

 been an apathy and resignation to fate, only pardonable 

 because the result of ignorance. 



When a veterinary surgeon is called upon to prevent 

 pleuro-pneumonia on an estate or farm, he finds that he has 

 to deal with cows, bulls, oxen, and calves. These animals 

 are more or less freely intermixed ; but where cows are con- 

 stantly tied up in a separate compartment, and a number of 



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