278 
LETTER BY DR. GREENIIOW. 
Letter by Dr. Headlam Greenhow, Lecturer on Public 
Health at St. Thomas’s Hospital, to the General Board 
of Health. 
“To the Right Hon. W. Monsell, JLP., President of the 
General Board of Health , Sfc. 
“ Sir, — As great misapprehension and much unnecessary 
alarm have arisen from the reported existence of a very 
fatal and contagious murrain among the horned cattle of 
those continental States from which cattle are chiefly im- 
ported into this country, it is desirable that the real facts 
should be understood. The disease at present or recently 
prevailing in Holstein and the adjoining countries is the 
“ pulmonary murrain/ and is identical with the Hung 
disease’ that has proved so destructive among the herds and 
dairies of Great Britain and Ireland during the last fifteen or 
sixteen years. 
“ Although possessed of infectious properties in a moderate 
degree, the ‘lung disease’ is known to arise spontaneously 
under certain ill-understood conditions of food and season, 
and is not usually believed to have been imported hither 
from abroad. It is almost universally diffused throughout 
this country, having from time to time broken out in an 
epidemic form in particular localities, and again disappeared, 
without any very obvious cause. Being already quite as 
prevalent here as on the continent, no danger exists to our 
cattle from the importation of foreign cattle suffering from 
the disease. 
“ Notwithstanding this, all animals suffering from this or 
any other serious disease that arrive from abroad are detained 
by the professional inspectors of the Board of Customs, 
and, if necessary, immediately slaughtered, their bodies 
being effectually destroyed if found to be unfit for human 
food, or, if otherwise, then delivered to the owner. The 
‘ lung disease’ is the only epidemic disease at present pre- 
vailing among the cattle in countries from which horned 
Cattle are imported into Great Britain. 
“There is, however, another much more contagious and 
fatal disease, called in Germany the ‘ Rinder-pest’ or Steppe 
murrain, which appears to have been confounded with the 
lung-disease, but which, with one or two trivial exceptions, 
does not at present exist in any part of Germany or the west 
of continental Europe. This ‘Steppe murrain’ is a totally 
different disease from the pulmonary murrain, and is spon- 
