538 
EDITORIAL. 
At the present writing, however, there is no visible prob¬ 
ability of the success of the u Miller bill.” That it will become 
a law by the action of the present Congress we do not anticipate. 
Probably one of the principal causes of its failure to receive an 
effective majority support, is one to which the defeat of any other 
good measure might be attributed, to-wit: the course adopted by 
two of the members of the committee having the matter in charge, 
Dr. Swinburne, of New Pork, and Dr. Gallinger, of New Hamp¬ 
shire. The remarks attributed to these two political M.D.s 
during the discussion of the bill betray evidences of the most 
disgraceful ignorance, and are accompanied by such shameful al¬ 
lusions to veterinary practitioners and practice, that we cannot 
refrain from expressing our contempt for the meanness and malice 
which taint the language they have thought proper to utter. To 
have dared to denounce the Chief of the Bureau of Animal In¬ 
dustry as either chargeable with ignorance or guilty of deceit, and 
in their insolence to apply to him such an epithet as “ would-be 
national butcher”—to make the audacious charge that “ Govern¬ 
ment veterinarians, any of them, know nothing about pleuro-pneu¬ 
monia ’ —to contend in their stupidity that “it [pleuro-pneumonia] 
is not contagious,” and to give “ the lie ” to those whose intelli¬ 
gent investigations have led them to a truer conclusion, as the 
New T ork M. D. does in the specially selected specimens of Bil¬ 
lingsgate which seem to find favor with his palate, are offences 
against truth and decency which cannot be contemplated without 
a sensation of shame in the minds of readers of integrity and 
refinement. Such publicly affirmed ignorance and conspicuously 
displayed impudence as this Congressional orator exploited, is, 
however, appropriately mated and echoed by the no less wonder¬ 
ful rhetorical essay of his emulative colleague, the M.D. from 
New Hampshire, who, from his invaluable endowment of personal 
ability and crowded reservoirs of medical information, rises and 
informs us that “ while pleuro-pneumonia is simply an inflamma-^ 
tion of the pleura and of the lungs, no medical man has ever yet 
dared to say that it is contagious.” These medico-political mag¬ 
nates have either become wofully rusty in their medical studies, 
or they have been from the beginning, wonderfully deficient in 
the sum of their acquirements. 
