480 
EDITORIAL. 
professional attention to the subject of the bovine lung plague, 
and who was desirous of expressing his views. He had a 
paper on the subject, in the preparation of which he had taken 
considerable pains. 
Dr. Gadsden, for some reason, which has not been made known 
to us, and which he believes consisted in the nature of the facts 
which he had gathered, and which, though sustained by his own 
observations, were not acceptable to those present, failed to obtain 
permission to read the paper he had offered, and consequently no 
discussion of his views could be had. 
These statements, and the theory involved in them, communi¬ 
cated to us by the Doctor, are, we believe, of sufficient interest to 
lay before our readers. If, as the Doctor contends, sustained by the 
opinion of such high English authorities as he has named, the con¬ 
tagion can only be communicated by contact with the living dis¬ 
eased animal, the sanitary regulations for the eradication of the dis¬ 
ease will become considerably simplified, and the possibility of its 
extermination throughout the country almost become an established 
future event. The observations of Dr. Gadsden, and of Profes¬ 
sors Williams, McCall, Walley and others ought not to be ignored 
and certainly those who have had as large a connection with the 
work relating to pleuro-pneumonia in the United States, for the 
last eight years, as Professor Law, Dr. Salmon, Professors Mc¬ 
Lean, Michener, Dr. Wray, and others, have had sufficiently abun¬ 
dant opportunities to observe the various modes of infection, to 
enable them to refute from their abundant experience, the theories 
of those who hold with Dr. Gadsden that the living subject of 
the disease is about the only efficient agent of its dissemination. 
The discussion and re-adjustment of a question involving interests 
so extensive in a manner so revolutionary, if it is indeed to be so 
re-adjusted as to land us so far from the position held at present, 
is a matter of great importance and should be gravely considered. 
The subject of pleuro-pneumonia occupied much of the time 
at the last International Veterinary Congress, held in Brussels 
in 1883, and the idea was generally admitted that the living ani¬ 
mal was not the only agent existing for the emission of the viru¬ 
lent principle, but that it might also emanate from the cadavers 
