CAUSES OF SPREAD OF FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE. 741 
and the profession at large. I have always found that 
“lampas” will give way to the use of the lancet, and feeding 
the animal for a few days upon soft food, the disease being 
merely an irritated and highly vascular condition of the parts, 
consequent upon the changing in young horses of the teeth. 
The same treatment will apply to aged ones in which we 
sometimes see the affection ; and how much better are simple 
measures like these, than following up the practice of the 
farrier and blacksmith of old. The day is long distant 
when the veterinary surgeon will be able to lay aside the firing- 
iron, yet, though used with such excellent results, let us not 
abuse it. Truly the use and method of applying the actual 
cautery need discussion, and so little having been said about 
the subject lately in our journal, must be my excuse for 
taking it up now. 
REMARKS ON SOME OF THE CAUSES OF THE 
SPREAD OF THE FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE 
IN IRELAND. 
By Observer. 
As a reader of your journal, I have noticed that from time to 
time you have complained of the inefficiency of the course adopted 
by the local authority in the several counties of England to 
arrest the progress of the “ foot and mouth disease.” 
In Ireland we are no better off, and it would appear that 
in both countries the very excellent measures which have 
recently passed the legislature are likely, at least in so far as 
this disease is concerned, to become dead letters, and pretty 
much from the same cause. 
It cannot be said that the Irish Government is inactive, 
but its efforts receive little or no support from the local 
magistracy. 
The Irish Farmers ’ Gazette of September 17th says that : 
“ We have made strict inquiries into the complaint of a 
f Limerick Farmer that the government was taking no 
steps to arrest the progress of infectious diseases, and find 
“ that so far from the government being inactive in this 
respect that on the 1st instant there were 387 farms in the 
county of Limerick, 140 in the county of Tipperary, and 133 
in Cork under stringent regulations on account of some of the 
animals on them being affected with ‘ foot and mouth disease ’ 
alone ; besides which there are farms under restrictions in the 
counties of Dublin, Kilkenny, Kildare, King’s County, 
Meath, Wexford, Wicklow, Clare, Waterford, Galway, Ros- 
xliii. 49 
