KERATITIS CONTAGIOSA IN CATTLE. 
23 
destined to serve in the interest of peace. As the commercial in¬ 
tercourse widens, the supply of horses is inadequate, and the con¬ 
tinual progress in agriculture gradually demands a greater number 
of more steady and tractable animals, whose principal qualifica¬ 
tions consist in the development of great strength. To-day, the 
importance of the horse as a domestic animal has increased, but as 
regards historical significance it has lost, inasmuch as it has no 
longer the only factor for the transportation of nations. Steam 
has superseded it. 
KERATITIS CONTAGIOSA IN CATTLE. 
By Frank S. Billings, 
Director of the Patho-Biological Laboratory of the State University of Nebraska. 
This is not a new disease by any means, so far as the United 
States are concerned, nevertheless I have been unable to find any 
description of it in the literature at my command. 
While new to myself until the last summer, there have been 
quite a number of reports of its existence, and complaints about 
it from farmers and breeders of cattle in some of the live stock 
/ 
journals of our western States. Under the circumstances it would 
seem that a description of its clinical phenomena and gross patho¬ 
logical lesions may not be without scientific interest to the ophthal¬ 
mologist, and have some practical value as well, especially as 
experience has shown that the extension of the disease over the 
members of a herd of cattle can be easily prevented by isolation 
measures, and its course much shortened by the mildest and sim¬ 
plest therapeutic treatment. 
History .—During the past year three quite extensive outbreaks 
have been reported to me in Nebraska; one having been at Kear¬ 
ney, and another at Gibbon in Buffalo County, while a third 
occurred in the immediate vicinity of Lincoln, thus giving an op¬ 
portunity for some personal observations. Of the outbreak at 
Kearney the owner wrote me that the trouble appears to begin as 
a small spot on the eye-ball, the eye running and gradually grow¬ 
ing worse, showing a purplish color, and becoming very sore; the 
