10 The Lung Plague of Cattle. 



seaports in ox-wagons, and all imported goods are carried 

 inland in the same way. This describes a country ol 

 2,400 miles across destitute of railroads and navigable 

 rivers, and which is being constantly traversed from side 

 to side by hundreds of ox- wagons and thousands of work- 

 ing oxen. The disease once introduced and favored by 

 such conditions speedily spread in every direction and 

 bade defiance to any attempt at suppression. 



Mr. Lindley related various instances from his own 

 knowledge of the disease having been conveyed by ox- 

 teams two and three hundred miles, and of its wide ex- 

 tension in the new localities, and contrasted them with ex- 

 amples in which chief and people, warned of the ap- 

 proach of the pestilence, resorted to spear and shield to 

 exclude all traveling teams and cattle, and thereby saved 

 their own herds, though only a half a mile off the victims 

 of the plague lay unburied in great numbers. 



Causes of the Disease. — The known cause of the disease 

 may be summed up in one word, contagion. All sorts of 

 causes have been invoked to account for the spontaneous 

 appearance of the disease ; but the theorists should first 

 assure themselves that they have seen a spmitaneous case 

 before attempting to account for it. Delafond attributed 

 it to : 1. Impurity of the air in stables ; 2. Excessively rich 

 food; 3. Secretion of milk to excess; 4. Chills of the 

 skin in inclement weather, and the breathing of cold air 

 when suddenly taken from a warm stable ; 5. Drinking 

 iced water; 6. Waters charged with corrupting organic 

 matter ; 7. Overwork in summer ; 8. Hereditary predis- 

 position; 9. Some unknown atmospheric and telluric 

 conditions usually referred to as epidemic influences. The 

 answer to one and all these allegations is this : that these 

 have all prevailed to an equal extent at different times in 

 different parts of the world, and do so still ; but no one 

 of them, nor all put together, can be shown to have pro- 

 duced this disease in any country from which cattle, and 



