428 
EDITORIAL. 
like all countries, who periodically find something of unusual 
importance, and at once load it upon the telegraph wires, but 
sober judgment by sober heads promptly do all they can to 
place matters in their true light. We know that we have 
quite extensively in the Mississippi valley a peculiar affection 
of the feet and mouths of cattle, mostly of milch cows, which 
has occasioned some loss. We saw it for a few weeks in late 
summer and fall of 1890, when it suddenly fell like some blight 
over a whole State at once, and then suddenly disappeared as 
mysteriously as it came. A few weeks ago it again appeared, 
the same as before, we know not from whence. It has none 
of the characteristics of the contagious foot and mouth dis¬ 
ease, and repeated attempts at transmission have uniformly 
proven unsuccessful. It seems quite unnecessary for Brit¬ 
ishers to become alarmed so long as inoculation from animal 
to animal gives negative results. 
When we had contagious pleuro-pneumonia in Chicago 
we detected it, notified the civilized world of the fact, said 
we would stamp it out, did stamp it out promptly, and noti¬ 
fied the world that the work was finished, and it was finished. 
When we have a serious contagious disease among live stock 
we recognize it and openly admit it, and after we have eradi¬ 
cated it we say so, and desire that such assertion shall be ac¬ 
cepted as fully as our admission of the existence of the disease. 
Many of our veterinarians are drawn from England, France 
and Germany, so that in case of an extensive outbreak of dis¬ 
ease we nearly always call in an available M. R. C. V. S., 
who after a pupilage in England, the source from which 
nearly all animal scourges flow, is quite competent to diag¬ 
nose pleuro-pneumonia or foot and mouth diseases. 
But this incredulity is not all international, and what we 
have of it here at home is no more to be prized than that we 
have already considered. After every animal of the bovine 
species in the infected area in Chicago had been slaughtered 
to stamp out pleuro-pneumonia, and every cow-shed had been 
demolished or disinfected, and the disease had been searched 
tor in every part of Illinois, several western States, through 
their veterinarians, maintained rigid quarantines against Illi- 
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