NEW YORK STATE VETERINARY COLLEGE. 
647 
The results have abundantly vindicated the wisdom of the investment. The protected 
herds have furnished a cheap and abundant food for the growing populations ; the increas¬ 
ing demand for cattle food and the multiplying of the natural sources of rich manure, have 
combined to enrich the fields and improve the crops ; the improved agriculture and abun¬ 
dance of food products have fostered every branch of manufacture and trade, and contri¬ 
buted to a substantial prosperity. 
1 he contrast in countries where veterinary science has been ignored is quite instruct- 
ive. In South Africa, apart from the mining interests, grazing has long been the main 
source of wealth. Into this country lung plague was imported in infected Dutch cattle in 
1 054 and extending on the unfenced grazing tracts, under a semi-tropical climate, proved 
so disastrous that, according to Lindley, whole herds of one or two hundred head would 
pens without a single exception. At that time the Matabele chief, occupying land pro¬ 
tected on two sides by inaccessible cliffs, successfully defended his passes against the dis¬ 
eased cattle and saved the wealth of his people. 
, Now recently a cargo from infected Hindostan has implanted the still more redoubt¬ 
able rmdeipest in South Africa, and in the disturbed condition of the country this has 
penetrated even into Matabeleland, and bids fair to destroy the cattle industry of South 
Africa. 
Again the lung plague, imported into Australia in 1859, in a diseased English cow, 
was allowed to spread over the whole island continent, and permanently blighted the 
cattle industry of one of the finest pasture lands on earth. 
In England this same lung plague in the forty years succeeding 1842 cost the nation 
1500,000,000. 
In the United States the same plague prevailed in our eastern seaboard States for over 
forty years, causing losses that have never been estimated, and incidentally leading to an 
embargo on American cattle in England which entailed a loss of #10 a head on an aver¬ 
age to the exporter. This alone amounted to $2,000,000 per annum. It was only when 
the plague reached the centre of our cattle traffic (Chicago) and bade fair to invade the 
whole country—including the unfenced territories—and to repeat in America the ex¬ 
perience of South Africa and Australia, that the national and State Governments were 
roused from their lethargy, and we were empowered to take efficient measures for its ex¬ 
tinction. Happily now it has no place on this Continent, and with reasonable precautions 
can never make a new invasion. 
The same line of thought and similar historic facts, could be followed and adduced as 
to the other animal plagues, including the affections caused by the larger animal parasites, 
as to enzootic diseases caused by faulty conditions of the environment, as to constitutional 
diseases due to errors in breeding, diet and regimen, and as to local diseases many of 
which are due to improper treatment. 
In America, as in Europe, we can successfully maintain that the benefits already 
drawn from the veterinary profession have abundantly vindicated its claim to State sup¬ 
port. But the prospective value of the work of veterinary investigation and education far 
exceeds all that they have accomplished for the nation in the past. Among our horses 
glanders yearly claims a large and valuable sacrfice to its devouring poison. Among cat¬ 
tle, anthrax, tuberculosis and Southern cattle fever cause widespread, though needless de¬ 
struction. Our sheep flocks are decimated everywhere by remorseless parasites, in¬ 
ternal and external. Among swine the preventible infectious fevers cost the nation on a 
low estimate $20,000,000 per annum. Among fowls the prevalent contagious affections 
are no less disastrous. 
In the matter of numbers the wealth at stake in the live stock of America is as great as 
that of European nations, and to the reasoning mind is no less exacting of measures for its 
protection. In four of the most important countries of western Europe the aggregate of the 
farm mammals is considerably less than that of the United States. Yet these four countries 
of western Europe (France, Belgium, Holland and Germany) have eleven veterinary 
schools, maintained and fostered at state expense. Surely our own Empire State with its 
9,500,000 of farm mammals, with its large emporia at Buffalo, Albany and New York 
for the reception and diffusion of live stock from other States and its record of a recent 
riddance from a cattle plague which for over forty years had hung like a pall on the cattle 
industry of the State, and exacted a tax of $2,000,000 or more per annum from home 
herds and exports, is fully justified in establishing a State Veterinary College. 
