WEST OF SCOTLAND VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 683 
without manifesting the slightest tendency to tubercular forma¬ 
tions ? Thousands upon thousands, we may say. And, again, 
how often do we see the disease appear in young, healthy, 
vigorous animals ? Deficient drainage, bad water, poor herbage, 
damp, clayey soils; hence, it is more prevalent in certain soils, 
especially if much exposed, mossy, and prolific of iron-grass: 
and peculiarity of climate; either of these causes may act singly 
or together. I have many facts in my possession bearing out 
this view of the causes, and I am of opinion that in particular 
soils or localities the disease is contracted without any hereditary 
idiosyncrasy, as I have seen cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs 
affected on such farms, and even animals of an entirely different 
breed, and brought from distant farms, of an entirely different 
character of soil, have ultimately succumbed to the disease. Mr. 
Kettle, of Market Drayton, tells me that he was seven years in a 
large cattle practice in Devon, where the climate is mild and 
humid, and never saw a single case; wdiereas, in Shropshire, 
where the atmosphere is, as a rule, cold and dry, and in many 
places the soil of a clayey character, he has seen many cases. 
The latter part of the statement I can fully confirm. West 
Derby, in Lancashire, is notorious for its number of cases of con¬ 
sumption in the human subject. M. Wanner (see Lancet, June 
10th, 1848) states his belief that phthisis is due to the abundance 
of calcareous matter in the soil (in this I cannot entirely agree 
with him), for in one part of France, viz. Sologne, in the 
Orleannais province, where the soil is devoid of such material, no 
tubercle exists, and in another part of the same district, where 
the soil is rich in calcareous matter, tubercle is very prevalent. 
Heavy drain upon the system by excessive or prolonged lactation, 
and at the same time, adopting the pernicious system of feeding 
upon brewers* grains or chaff, thus lowering the vital forces, so 
that if an exudate is thrown out, or a tubercle germ is formed in 
or accidentally gains access to the body, healthy organisation does 
not take place, or the system cannot prevent the further develop¬ 
ment or multiplication of the germ or germs : disease of the diges¬ 
tive organs giving rise to impaired nutrition from inability to 
convert the food into an easily assimilable material, coupled with 
loss of appetite, though this may be secondary from deposition of 
tubercular matter in juxtaposition to the plexuses and ganglia 
formed by the sympathetic and pneumogastric nerves, or the 
peripheries of those nerves. 
The supply of large quantities of artificial foods, or the too free 
use of certain artificial manures, this accounting somewhat for 
the fact that, in spite of improved drainage and breeding, the 
disease exists to quite as great (if not considerably greater) an 
extent as it ever did. Diseased condition of the blood, decom- 
