Foot-and-Mouth Disease : its History and Teachings. 
9 
breeding purposes. One rule which was not permissive, was 
that persons in charge of infected animals must give notice to 
the police, so that the Inspector could in due course inform the 
Local Authorities of the outbreak. Naturally, the failure of 
such haphazard, unconcerted proceedings bj Local Authorities 
inflicted much trouble and vexation upon trade and traffic ; it 
involved interference at large with fail's and markets, and the 
business operations of farmers and graziers, while proper isola- 
tion and disinfection in the case of individual outbreaks were 
omitted ; and, altogether, the effect was to weaken the faith of 
farmers in any measures prescribed by the wisdom of legislators. 
Better things were hoped of the Contagious Diseases 
(Animals) Act of 1878, which measure, brought in by the 
Duke of Richmond, left to each Local Authority the duty of 
taking all the steps it thought necessary against foot-and-mouth 
disease in its own district. The Local Authorities were bound 
to appoint Inspectors and other officers to investigate outbreaks, 
and, on receipt of a verified report, to declare the limits of an 
" infected place." A Local Authority was also expected to send 
up to the Privy Council its opinion whether or not an " infected 
area " should be declared, and whether it was expedient or not 
to interfere with any particular market, fair, sale, or exhibition. 
But, generally speaking, these specified advices to the Privy 
Council were not, when foot-and-mouth disease was at its 
height during the last great outbreak, forthcoming ; nor did the 
powers accorded by the Act to the Privy Council, to supplement 
defective action on the part of Local Authorities, operate 
effectually against the mischief. Thus the insufficiency of the 
Act of 1878 — a measure at first favourably regarded, owing to 
a comparative degree of success obtained in combating the out- 
break of 1879 — was, by the lamentable experience of the years 
succeeding the last outbreak, completely demonstrated. 
It is not, as has been often asserted, wholly to the prejudice 
and obstinacy of breeders and grazers, or the impatience and 
selfishness of dealers, that we can attribute the averseness to 
heroic measures for exterminating foot-and-mouth disease. The 
public were shrewd enough to perceive that the results obtained 
were not sufficiently promising ; that the wholesale measures 
enforced over wide tracts of country were not adequate to the 
required end. The parties interested had been slowly learning, 
by the course of events, that the machinery of the Act for 
dealing with internal outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, was 
at fault ; that so long as uniform control was not provided for, 
and a system of compulsory regulations enforced, which could 
be immediately applied at the moment of emergency, the 
machinery was imperfect. As a matter of fact, the sacrifice to 
