CONTAGIOUS PLEURO-PNEUMONIA. 
471 
CONTAGIOUS PLEURO-PNEUMONIA. 
By Pbof. D. MoEaohran. 
Montreal, Nov. 9, 1886. 
Dear Doctor :—I have just received your esteemed favor, and 
reply I beg to express regrets that I am unable to be present at 
)ur convention. Be assured that the object of your meeting has 
y most hearty sympathy. You ask me to give you some sug- 
istions based on my experience of the disease. Knowing as I do 
lat the disease is far more widely spread than even the members 
£ your convention have any idea of; knowing as I do how veiy 
isidious a disease it is, and how much cattlemen, small owners 
t least, will do to convince themselves and others that the dis¬ 
use is not among them, as well as the ill-defined symptoms which 
iark its initial stages, so ill-defined, in fact, that it may be in 
rogress for months in a herd before an expert is asked to ex- 
tnine them. This feature of the disease was well illustiated in 
le quarantine at Quebec, where in each instance the men in 
harge positively affirmed that no disease existed in their herd. 
)ne man was so thoroughly convinced of this that he went so far 
s to defy the local Inspector to kill any of them, and it had to 
>e delayed till I arrived. In fact, so ill-defined were the symp- 
oms in Mr. McCrae's bull, “ Independence,” that a professional 
riend who accompanied me, on a casual observation of him as he 
tood, looking fat and slick, remarked, u You must have some 
lerve to kill such a valuable animal while he looks so well.” In 
act the Allan Herd of Polled Angus could not possibly look in 
)etter condition than at the time we killed them. Yet there was 
lot one free from the pathological lesions of the disease. Hoes 
his not point out a difficulty which meets you under your piesent 
amentable circumstances, of tracing its radiation from the great 
centre, Chicago ? How many infected animals have been carried 
over your great railway lines to every point of the compass, 
spreading the contagion wherever they have gone ? yet no one, 
lot even their owners, being aware of the dangerous plague- 
stricken animals they were thus carrying to their healthy herds. 
