72 Tlie Farmer's Veterinary Adviser. 



would at times be met with. Thus the life of the germ 

 Biay be destroyed by oxygen under, a pressure of three 

 atmospheres, but in too many cases it is to be feared such 

 intensified oxygen would oxidize the chemical products, and 

 thus rob them of all their virtue. 



In cases where these limitations are found to operate, 

 there may perhaps still be devised, in the future, other 

 methods of sterilization which will not affect the chemical 

 condition nor virulent potency of the disease-products, and 

 thus the grand principle of prevention by sterilized products 

 may receive a much wider application than can be effected 

 by the methods of sterilization by heat or compressed 

 oxygen. 



Radical Extinction of Ani/mal Plagues. The public 

 appreciation of preventive medicine is still at a very low 

 ebb. It has been aptly said, people will give " millions for 

 cure, but not a cent for prevention." It is incomprehensible 

 how, year after year, and generation after generation, we 

 can see the human race dying off from preventable diseases, 

 and yet with true fatalism accept it all as the inevitable. 

 It is astounding to contemplate the thousands of tons of 

 quack remedies, so called, which mankind yearly swallow, 

 for maladies chargeable only on their own ignorance or 

 neglect of available means of prevention. Still more 

 astounding is it to see the plagues of animals imported into 

 a new country, and by the most criminal negligence allowed 

 to acquire a general prevalence, when the prompt sacrifice 

 of one animal, or one hundred, or one thousand, could at the 

 different stages have put a final end to the contagion. Yet 

 all radical measures for the extirpation of animal plagues 

 are habitually treated with neglect or active opposition ; 

 the advocate of such measures is told that " his duty is to 

 cure, not kill," and his reasoning is scouted as the " logic 

 of the pole-axe." And all this not by the common people 

 alone, but by those whose position would entitle us to expect 



