MIDLAND COUNTIES VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 779 
refrain from again calling your attention to the chaotic confusion of 
ideas which seems to prevail regarding this disease, not only in the 
agricultural and legislative mind, but also in the leading journal of 
our profession. In confirmation of these three positions I must 
for the first appeal to each gentleman’s experience ; for the second, 
I shall refer you to the late enactments on contagious diseases and 
the modes in which they are carried out by the various local 
authorities and the veterinary department of the Privy Council, and 
for the third to the 913th page of the Veterinarian for December, 
1869, wherein it is stated “that pleuro-pneumonia frequently 
ceases in a herd spontaneously, after having carried off a few 
animals, and that it will remain dormant in a herd of fifteen or 
twenty animals for ten or twelve weeks.” To both of these state- 
ments I give a flat denial, as it never arises in this kingdom spon- 
taneously and it never ceases but when the conditions for its 
perpetuation either from accident or intent are destroyed, and it 
never lies dormant when the healthy are exposed to the con- 
tamination of the infected. Again, in a leading article in the same 
number of the Veterinarian , hints are thrown out that the belief in 
the exclusive foreign origin of foot and mouth disease, as well as 
contagious pleuro-pneumonia, is'possibly erroneous, and pleads in 
passing that the former appeared in England, and the latter disease 
in Ireland, some years before foreign stock were admitted free from 
tariff. 
I have paid some attention to the recent enactments of Parlia- 
ment and the orders of Privy Council regarding contagious diseases 
in animals, but I have failed to deduce to my own satisfaction under 
what veterinary advice or information those laws have been framed. 
I fully expected to have seen in them an expression of definite 
views regarding contagious diseases, their periods of incubation, 
modes of infection, best means of disposing of diseased animals, 
and other particulars far more precise than anything the new laws 
contain. It is well said in the article above alluded to “that the 
legislation which has been undertaken with the especial object of 
dealing with them has been rendered abortive, not only by the 
Privy Council leaving it open to local authorities to appoint police 
constables as inspectors, but by the divided responsibility and 
conflicting opinions resulting.” 
I should like to ask the editor of the Veterinarian , as the adviser 
of the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council, wherefore he 
countenances so great an injustice to the profession. 
Would the advisers of the medical department of government 
submit that policemen should be public vaccinators — an operation 
requiring far less skill than the detection of disease ? To whom is 
the credit due for pointing out the necessity for legislation against 
this contagious disease of animals ? Not to chief constables and 
policemen, but to the veterinary profession in general, and Professor 
John Gamgee in particular; neither of these have received due 
recognition or acknowledgment. 
Do the people and Government consider there is any economy in 
