28 
.TAMES LAW. 
I submit that in place of furnishing negative evidence, which 
is put out of court at once by the production of one positive 
case, Dr. Gadsden should take up the many positive cases on 
record. Let him take up Fleming’s works, or any European work 
on veterinary sanitary police, or let him take my monograph on 
lung plague and dispose of the cases therein related. 
Before concluding, however, I am in duty bound to refer to 
the case of the Slmfeldt distillery stables at Chicago. In the 
light of facts the Slmfeldt distillery case was a triumph of disin¬ 
fection, and not a disproof of the need of disinfection. 
The stables were retenanted in January, 1887, and when I 
arrived in Chicago in the following April, I still found abundant 
evidence of the liberal use of whitewash containing chloride of lime. 
That the flooring was not removed was of less account, considering 
that the swill had escaped freely from the troughs and filled up 
the interval beneath the floor, where it had undergone a strongly 
acid fermentation. Now the germ of lung plague lives in an 
alkaline or neutral medium and is not adapted to survive in the 
presence of a powerful acid. The material beneath the floor 
then was a disinfectant of this germ. But, besides this, the 
whitewash liberally applied to walls and roof was of necessity 
even more liberally applied to feeding troughs and floor. 
One point apparently in favor of Dr. Gadsden’s position re¬ 
mains, though he has failed to specifically state it. One row of 
cattle was put in a line where no whitewash had been applied. 
The commissioners informed me that a partition had been put up 
and the whitewash applied up to this, and permission secured to 
fill up to this point. The owners, however, found it desirable to 
put in another row of cattle, and accordingly moved the partition 
to accommodate them. These and these alone stood on a floor that 
had not been whitewashed ? Was it therefore not disinfected ? 
If any one has any doubt on this subject, I extend him the 
invitation to enter one of our New York cow stables on which 
one of our disinfecting corps is exercising its skill, and to stay for 
fifteen minutes if he can. He will have no further doubt about 
the disinfection. Our active agent is chloride of lime, which 
gives off so much free chlorine that none but those inured to the 
work can stand it, and these habitually wear sponges over their 
