678 
EDITORIAL. 
in Prof. Osgood’s communication, and we print it herewith in 
full: 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
Board of Cattle Commissioners, 
52 Village St., Boston, Nov. 30, 1896. 
7 o His Honor Roger Wolcott , Lieutenant Governor and Acting Governor : 
$ IR ; —I hereby beg to tender to you my resignation as a member of the Board of Cattle 
Commissioners of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and to respectfully request that it 
be accepted at once. My reasons for taking this step at this time are, that my convictions 
forbid my further implied responsibility in the execution of a law which was passed against 
my earnest protest, and which, in my opinion, involves the expenditure of a large sum of 
public money without adequate return to the State, especially in view of the fact that plain 
indications point to a still further divergence from what I believe to be the only wise and 
efficient system of dealing with contagious diseases among cattle. 
I was appointed a member of the Board on the third of July, 1894, and soon became 
its chairman. I accepted the appointment at considerable personal sacrifice, because I 
felt there was need of prompt and vigorous action which should tend toward the eradica¬ 
tion of tuberculosis from among the neat cattle in this State, the widespread existence of 
which I considered a serious menace to the public health ; and because I believed that the 
law of 1894, under which I was appointed, placed in the hands of the Board full and 
adequate power to enable it to cope with it successfully. 
hollowing this, after a most thorough and careful consideration of all the facts, the 
Board came to the unanimous conclusion that by using the somewhat recently discovered 
tuberculin, as a diagnostic agent, they could, without harm to sound cattle, detect tuber¬ 
culosis in the affected animals with very great precision ; and that by a careful and sys¬ 
tematic examination of all the neat cattle within its borders, and the destruction of all 
found diseased, the State could, within a reasonable time, eradicate tuberculosis from its 
neat stock. 
Acting under the provisions of the law of 1894, the Board in November, 1894, began 
such an examination in three of the southeastern counties of the State, which included the 
removal and destruction of the diseased animals and a thorough disinfection of the prem¬ 
ises where disease was found ; and thereafter,.until the law was changed, maintained a 
rigid quarantine over the territory in which the work had been completed. Had the Board 
been allowed to continue this work throughout the State, I believe that within a compara¬ 
tively shoit time, and with an expenditure small in comparison with the good accom¬ 
plished, the State would have been able to stamp out this disease. 
While the plan adopted was capable of more or less modification in detail, I believe that 
no permanent good can ever be accomplished except by pursuing a policy which shall 
substantially embrace this method of operation. 
At the time when the report of our Board was submitted to the Legislature in janu- 
ary, ie> 95 > systematic work had but just been inaugurated, and no fair opportunity had 
been given for fully testing its efficacy. Even at that stage, however, it was yielding ex¬ 
tremely good results ; results far better, I believe, than can be accomplished by any other 
system, or than has ever been accomplished in any other part of the world in this class of 
work. In our report for that year the Board unanimously recommended a continuation of 
this work. 
