SOCIETY MEETINGS. 
467 
day, Sept. 14th) in a tolerably good state of preservation. Upon opening the 
thoracic cavity and examining the lungs, I found them both to be very much 
congested, but hepatization had not commenced, and they did not display the 
slightest evidences of contagious pleuro-pneumonia. 
Other lots of these steers, sold before sickness appeared among them, are, I 
was told, doing well. One lot sold since they were attacked, I heard, had one or 
two sick among them. 
I think the outbreak at Cornish is chiefly due to the fact that these young cat¬ 
tle, coming from a distant part of the country, and after a long, fatiguing jour¬ 
ney, were more susceptible to such a disease than cattle which had been in the 
locality all summer. 
The farmers of the vicinity, knowing that these cattle had come through the 
Chicago stock yards, where there was an outbreak of contagious pleuro-pneu¬ 
monia last year, were naturally very much alarmed. Dr. F. C. Wilkinson, of 
Claremont, and Dr. Geo. H. Farnsworth, of Rutland, Vt., two local veterinar¬ 
ians, made a post-mortem examination of one of the steers, and gave it as their 
opinion that the disease was contagious pleuro-pneumonia. This greatly in¬ 
creased the public excitement. 
When I made the post-mortem on the animal I had dug up, there were 
twenty or thirty farmers present, and the selectmen told me if it had been gener¬ 
ally known that 1 was coming, the audience would have been very much larger. 
Of course, they were very much relieved to find that the disease was not contag¬ 
ious pleuro-pneumonia. 
Conclusions. —1. From the above we can safely conclude that this is a specific 
infectious lung disease, due to the presence of a small micrococcus. 
2. That its effects are shown on the lungs, whether inhaled or introduced 
iuto the circulation in any other way. 
3. That animals attacked by it may entirely recover. 
4. That the germ may be easily isolated and cultivated. 
Animals attacked by it should be isolated until they have entirely recovered. 
Animals that die should be buried, or, better still, cremated. 
If they are worth treating, the same treatment should be adopted as in ordi¬ 
nary sporadic pneumonia. 
Whether one attack gives immunity from subsequent attacks, remains to be 
determined. 
Further study of the micro-organisms causing the disease may be productive 
of additional knowledge concerning its character. 
Horses pastured with cattle suffering from the disease do not show symp¬ 
toms of pneumonia ; a number of horses being in the Lyndeboro pasture when 
the cattle were sick. I was told that the horses all had “ pink eye” early in the 
summer. Whether this disease and equine influenza bear any relation to each 
other, I cannot say. 
4 _ 
At the conclusion of the paper, Dr. Peters showed microscopical prepara¬ 
tions of the cultivations of the germ of this disease. 
Dr. Osgood said that he had on one occasion met with similar cases in a lot 
of young bulls shipped from Chicago. They had been a week or ten days in 
