766 MIDLAND COUNTIES VETERINARY ME DICAL ASSOCIATION . 
In conclusion, allow me to thank you for listening to what I have 
had to say. I state these opinions, not finding fault with what is 
now done, but thinking the time has now arrived that we should he 
energetic, for I should be very sorry to see the profession to 
which I have so many years belonged left behind in the progress of 
science. 
After the delivery of the President’s address Mr. G. Poyser , of 
Ashbourne, read his “ Essay on Contagious Pleuro-Pneumonia in 
Cattle.” 
Mr. President and Gentlemen : — 
The reasons which have led me to trouble you with my ideas of 
some of the characteristics of this disease are the uncertain notions 
apparently prevailing among the public and in a less degree in the 
profession, regarding its contagious and specific nature. The 
majority of writers on this subject, with which I am acquainted, have 
failed to give any definite opinions of these attributes. I know one 
member of our profession in particular, and who from his years, 
position, and practice, must have had a fair share of experience, who 
publicly proclaims his disbelief in its contagious nature. I know 
others whose opinions are sceptical. I know intelligent farmers and 
gentlemen, leading spirits of agricultural societies, who think that 
food, weather, impurities, atmospherical agencies, and artificial 
management are among the causes of this, to them, indigenous 
disease of our cattle. Even as recently as the October number, 1869, 
of the Veterinarian there is the reprint of an essay read before the 
Eastern Counties Veterinary Medical Association, in which the 
author states it to be a question difficult to decide whether atmo- 
spheric agencies, unseasonable weather, quality of food and water, 
impurities of sheds, and confinements on board ship, merely pre- 
dispose to, or actually generate the morbific matter. There is no 
writer whose views so far agree with my limited experience as those 
of Professor John Gamgee. He says, “ The outbreak of contagious 
pleuro-pneumonia in countries beyond the centres of spontaneous 
origin, the mountainous regions of Central Europe, is wholly due to 
contagion, and the contagious nature of this virulent malady is 
incontestably proved by an overwhelming amount of evidence.” 
Gentlemen, I am not about to lay before you a minute detail of 
the history of the disease, or an elaborate record of its physio- 
pathology (although I think the field of research sufficiently unex- 
plored to repay those qualified to enter upon it), but to give you a 
plain unbiassed narrative of my experience regarding it. 
Soon after I entered on my pupilage to the veterinary profession 
in March, 1846, my then master was requested to visit a farm 
whereon were kept about twenty cows and a bull. It was found that 
three cows were then unwell, and in a few days, two more were per- 
ceived amiss ; they were all treated: three died and two recovered. 
It was considered to be the new fatal disease, contagious pleuro- 
pneumonia, about which everybody was talking, but of which little 
was then known. The cattle on this farm at this time were housed. 
