74 The Lung Plague of Cattle. 



What is better, because more prompt in its action, is 

 the inhalation of the fumes of burning sulphur. 



To Dr. Dewar, of Kirkcaldy, Scotland, belongs the 

 credit of having first tested this agent on the bovine lung 

 plague. He selected a city stable where sickness had 

 been continuous for 20 years, and where the last victim 

 had been hauled off three days before. He had the herd 

 fumigated twice a day for half an hour each time and 

 had no other case of sickness. I can furnish a number 

 of similar cases. Patrick Green, West Farms, put a 

 large herd in infected stables in April last and by July 

 had lost nine head. He began fumigating the remain- 

 der and has not lost an animal since. Timothy Ryan, 

 Eidgewood, kept a herd of about 25 cows and had 

 lost 20 within a year. His place was so saturated with 

 the infected products that our own inspectors and vet- 

 erinarians from a distance concluded, that burning would 

 be the only effectual purifier. He began fumigating June 

 15th, and though 7 of his remaining 22 cows were fresh 

 from the country, he has not had a case of sickness since 

 — now three months. This measure must be applied most 

 thoroughly to be effectual and cannot be trusted to check 

 disease which has already seated itself in the lungs. It 

 is only when the germs have been deposited on the sur- 

 face of the air passages and have not yet made their way 

 deeply into its substance that good results can be hoped 

 for. The following printed instructions are distributed 

 to the owners of infected herds : 



" The surviving herd should be shut up in a close 

 building for half an hour once or twice a day, and made 

 to breathe the fumes of burning sulphur. Close the 

 doors and windows, place a piece of paper on a clean 

 shovel, lay a few pinches of Flowers of Sulphur upon it, 

 and set it on fire, adding more sulphur, pinch by pinch, 

 as long as the cattle can stand it without coughing. 

 Continue for a month." 



