, CATTLE PLAGUE. 293 



sufficiently advanced to admit of a system of international notification, 

 our Consular authorities should he instructed to give immediate notifica 

 tion of the existence of small-pox in other countries, and every measure 

 should be enforced to diminish the possibilities of importation. The 

 duties of a Central Health Office, presided over by a Minister of Health, 

 should include the collection of information as to the existence of small- 

 pox in other countries, and details should be published in the Annual 

 Reports of the Department. Regulations, for example, for dealing with 

 the importation of rags from smaU-pox stricken places should be enforced, 

 as in the case of cholera ; and if, in spite of these precautions, isolated 

 cases occurred in this country, they should be dealt with promptly. 



Notification should be enforced uniformly all over the country, and 

 there is not the slightest reason why the authorities and the public should 

 not immediately receive information of the existence of small-pox, whilst 

 to procure immediate isolation we have only to imitate the excellent 

 ambulance system of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. To procure 

 prompt notification there must be no loophole for evading the Act, and 

 there should be a heavy penalty for failure to notify not only small-pox, 

 but any case which may reasonably be supposed to be one of small-pox. 



The police should be required to report any case of small-pox in 

 common lodging-houses or shelters ; they should have power to require 

 any tramp suffering from small-pox, or from any disease which may 

 reasonably be supposed to be small-pox, to be examined by the medical 

 officer of the Union, and kept under observation, or transferred at once 

 to the isolation hospital ; and inmates of the workhouse should be daily 

 inspected, and no case allowed to leave when there is the least suspicion 

 of small-pox infection. 



Objections no doubt wiU be raised to this proposal, but the frequency 

 with which small-pox is spread by tramps fully justifies these measures. 

 All these measures should be carried out as a, matter of routine, and 

 without the semblance of panic. 



Isolation should be uniformly enforced all over the country, and 

 vaccination should be relegated to the position of a voluntary auxiliary 

 measure, which should never be allowed to take the place of sanitary 

 regulations to stamp out the disease. 



Cattle Plague. 



Cattle plague is a highly contagious disease of bovines producing 

 high fever, and characterised by an eruption with a resemblance to 

 human small-pox. The disease is transmissible to other ruminants, 

 and is inoculable in man. One attack gjves immunity against 

 future attacks. Cattle plague and small-pox are not intercom- 

 municable, and are specifically distinct diseases, but the resemblance 

 between them was recognised from early times. Ramazzini published 

 an account of the cattle pest in Italy in 1711, and described the 

 pustules which broke out over the body as similar to those of variola in 



