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CONTAGIOUS PLEURO-PNEUMONIA IN CONGRESS. 543 
? upon that which they had no time or disposition to attend to 
themselves. 
In place of this this political body voted by 114 to 25 to ap¬ 
point three experts to ascertain whether the disease is actually 
contagious and to report to Congress. It would be fully as 
rational to inquire as to whether small-pox is contagious. 
Had the most ignorant man in the veterinary profession asked 
for a commission to determine the nature and contagiousness of 
the lung plague at this late date, what a hue and cry would have 
been raised, and justly, against place-seekers and prodigal wasters 
of public money ! How much more when it is proposed to create 
as such a commission three medical men who are in no sense 
experts in the diseases of animals, to determine a matter which 
has been demonstrated beyond all cavil on many occasions, on the 
largest scale, and in different parts of the globe! While they sit 
and learn for themselves what has been already so well learned 
by others, the country will have lost at least $5,000,000 by the 
delay, ostensibly to save $250,000 which it was proposed to 
appropriate for quarantine and the extinction of the plague. 
But as the result appears to have been mainly secured through 
the efforts of the two political M. H.s it seems only fair to glance 
at the positions taken by these would-be masters of medical lore. 
J3r. Swinburne, of Hew York, in the course of a tirade against 
the Government veterinarians, as reported in the Breeder’s 
Gazette , said : “ The truth is they do not know anything about 
Dleuro-pneumonia, any of them, and that is the reason 1 ask for 
a commission. Let us have one solid doctor from Boston, another 
rrom Philadelphia, and another from the South.” When asked 
3y Mr. Funston, of Kansas, “ Has not every veterinary surgeon 
;vho has reported to the Government reported this disease to be 
ffeuro-pneumonia ? Ho not all agree as to this ? ” He answered : 
4 1 do not know that to be the fact. They have confessed them- 
.elves that it is not.” 
Mr. Funston—Ho they not say it is contagious? 
Hr. Swinburne—If it be pleuro-pneumonia it is not con- 
agio us. 
Mr. Funston—Ho not they say it is pleuro-pneumonia? 
