Never Spontaneous in America. 15 



succeeding twenty years, or as long as lie kept in the 

 milk business. This, which is but one instance out of 

 a hundred, covers fifteen years of the plague in the Skill- 

 man stables and brings the record down to 1869. It will 

 be observed that this was the first occurrence of any such 

 sickness in Mr. Meakim's herd ; it commenced, not in the 

 cows cooped up in hot buildings and heavily fed on swill, 

 but in the oxen that were almost constantly in the open 

 air, but which had been brought in contact with a dead 

 and infected cow ; the infection of the cows followed, and 

 for twenty long years no fresh cow cpuld be brought into 

 these stables with impunity. 



(c) Dr. Bathgate, Fordham Avenue and 171st st.. New 

 York, informs us that twenty years £^go (1859) his father 

 kept a herd of Jerseys, which contracted the disease by 

 exposure to sick animals, and that all efforts to get rid of 

 it failed, until when, several years later, the barns were 

 burned down. The devouring elemqnt secured what the 

 skill of the owner had failed to accomplish — a thorough 

 disinfection. 



For some time so prevalent was the disease that Dr. 

 Bathgate did not dare to turn his cattle out in the fields 

 lest they should be infected by contact with cattle ovei 

 the fence. Since the period of the infection of his own 

 herd, he knows that the pestilence has been constantly 

 prevalent in many of the dairies around him. This 

 bridges over the time from the Skillman street and Meak 

 un cases down to the present day. 



(d) Twenty years ago (1859) Mr. Benjamin Albertson, 

 Queens, Queens Co., L. I., purchased four cows out of 

 Herkimer County herd which had got belated and had 

 been kept over night in a stable in Sixth street. New 

 York, where the cattle market then was. These cows 

 sickened with lung fever, and infected his large herd of 

 100 head, 25 of which died in rapid succession, and 19 

 more slowly. He was left with but 60 head out of a herd, 



