Virulence in America. 21 



fresh stable and new cows, which have kept sound until 

 the present year. One fresh cow, bought this year, suf- 

 fered, but was carefully kept apart until disposed of by 

 the State inspectors. 



Joseph Schwab, 149th street and Southern Boulevard, 

 Beven years ago, bought of a dealer a cow said to have 

 come from New Eochelle. She sickened and infected his 

 herd, of which he lost twenty-three in a few months. 

 Seven of the herd recovered. A year later he again be- 

 gan to buy, but only from sound herds, and since that 

 time has escaped, until recently when an infected calf 

 was taken in from a dealer. 



UdeU Cohen, 14th street. New York, kept 14 cows, and 

 in March, 1879, bought 3 of Jacob Strauss, a dealer. 

 One of them was sick from the first, but after a few 

 weeks improved. Then two others sickened and died. 

 In June 5 others sickened and the whole were sold to a 

 butcher. Cohen moved to New Jersey and started anew. 



Cases like these ought to convince all that this disease 

 is eminently and most dangerously contagious. No one 

 who has studied the plague in Europe can truthfully 

 claim that it is less infectious here than in the old world. 

 What misleads many is, that during the cooler season 

 many of the cases assume a subacute type, and others 

 subside into a chronic form with a mass of infecting 

 material (dead lung) encysted in the chest, but unat- 

 tended by acute symptoms. But this feature of the dis- 

 ease renders it incomparably more insidious and danger- 

 ous than in countries where the symptoms are so much 

 more severe, that even the owners are roused at once to 

 measures of prevention. In moderating the violence of 

 its action, the disease does not part with its infecting 

 qualities, but only diffuses them the more subtilely in 

 proportion as its triie nature is liable to be overlooked. 

 A main reason why imobservant people fail at first sight 

 to see that the lung fever is contagious is, that the seeds 

 2* 



