THE FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE IN AUSTRALIA. 
429 
permitted to land without undergoing supervision and inspection 
by a veterinary surgeon. (A Voice.—“ But they have not been put 
into quarantine.”) They were not put into quarantine, but they 
were virtually placed in quarantine, because they were not permitted 
to land until they had been inspected. If the disease ran its course 
in ten days there was not much danger after all of its being intro¬ 
duced here, but it was a singular fact that the disease had appeared 
at Sydney amongst the stock of one of those very persons whom 
Mr. M‘Dougall said would be the last to introduce any disease. He 
agreed, however, that it was desirable to establish some sort of 
quarantine. 
Mr. Kirk agreed with the mover of the resolution, that the Go¬ 
vernment should be called upon to exercise greater vigilance, but 
he thought it would be monstrous to say that henceforth we would 
have no dealings with the outside world because we had sufficient 
stock for ourselves in the colony. 
The motion having been seconded by Mr. John Cooper, a dis¬ 
cussion arose as to whether the foot and mouth disease was one 
which attacked the human species. 
Mr. M'Dougall denied that the disease had ever appeared in any 
human subject at home. While in England himself he had handled 
fifty diseased animals, and he had never heard it suggested even 
that there was any danger in so doing. 
A gentleman present drew attention to the fact that the Govern¬ 
ment veterinary surgeon at Sydney had expressed the opinion that 
the disease might be communicated to man by the use of infected milk. 
Mr. Wm. Thomson, surgeon, said that the question was now 
being discussed in the English medical journals. 
Mr. Josiah Mitchell said he happened to have in his pocket an 
extract on the subject from the Veterinarian, which he would read: 
—“In Hertfordshire, Cheshire, and.in other parts of the country, 
infants and young children have been affected with many of the 
familiar symptoms of foot and mouth disease, occasioned by their 
drinking the milk of cows suffering from this contagious disease. 
In the medical journals, Dr. Alfred Packman, of Puckridge, is 
stated to have recently treated several children suffering from the 
peculiar eruption of the mouth, nose, and face, accompanied by 
sore tongue and throat and salivation.” Dr. Packman has no 
doubt that the symptoms resulted from the patients having used 
the milk of affected cows. Where the foot and mouth poison in a 
state of activity has not been swallowed in quantities sufficient to 
reproduce the special disorder in children, it very frequently pro¬ 
claims its injurious presence by inducing sickness and diarrhoea. 
Somewhat similar results occur among calves, many of which have 
troublesome and often fatal diarrhoea, from being fed with the con¬ 
taminated milk. Even pigs, which are supposed to have omniverous 
appetites and digestive vigour adequate to make away with almost 
any description of diet, have often sickened and died from being 
fed on murrain milk, which the ignorant, senseless owners fancied 
was “too good to waste.” 
