154 
W. Y. WILLIAMS. 
offer, to enlarge the scope of their operations and ask us to con¬ 
trol the ravages of many others of the long list of contagious dis¬ 
eases of animals. 
No country in the world can boast of a longer or more com¬ 
plete list of contagious diseases of animals than ours. We have, 
or have had, in cattle, pleuro-pneumonia, foot and mouth disease, 
Tevas fever, anthrax and tuberculosis; in horses, glanders, stran¬ 
gles, several serious contagious or epizootic fevers, a mild form of 
venereal disease, and have lately completed the list of known 
contagious diseases of this climate by adding and giving a foot¬ 
hold to equine syphilis or maladie du coit, a malignant, destruc¬ 
tive venereal disorder; in sheep, foot rot, scab and others; in the 
pig. cholera, trichina, anthrax, tape-worm; in the dog, rabies; in 
fowls, fowl cholera ; and in all a number of minor parasitic dis¬ 
orders. If to the above we would add the Russian cattle plague, 
or rinderpest, the list would be complete. 
Many, if not all, of these diseases, must eventually be referred 
to the veterinary profession for control or extirpation, affording 
inexhaustible fields of research, which are now occupied only by 
a few such men as Pasteur, of France, and in our own country, 
Salmon, Dettners and Billings. They are doing noble work, but 
their numbers can be increased without detracting from the use¬ 
fulness or renown of those now in the field. 
The veterinarian of the future is destined, also, to be a useful 
and appreciated guardian of public health. It is generally well 
known that a large proportion of the meat and milk, especially 
that sold in large cities, is unfit for human food, endangering the 
health or even life of the consumer, and the learned veterinarian 
may render an important service by indicating what is or is not 
suitable for human food, or by directing such reforms in the care 
of meat or milk producing animals as would insure healthy pro¬ 
ducts. 
Highly important, also, are the talents of the skilled veterin¬ 
arian, when employed to prevent the transmission of serious and 
fatal contagious diseases from animal to man; either by extirpat¬ 
ing or limiting the spread of these diseases among lower animals, 
or as Pasteur and his followers now propose, to rob them of their 
horrors. 
