CONTAGIOUS PLEURO-PNEUMONIA IN CONGRESS. 
545 
I 
authority to go out and ascertain whether the disease is pleuro¬ 
pneumonia, and if it is pleuro-pneumonia whether it is contagious, 
and let them report to Congress. 
“ Then we shall have a basis upon which we can enact legisla¬ 
tion that will really be for the benefit of the people who are in¬ 
terested in the cattle industry of the country, instead of being 
stampeded by the fears of communities where the disease con¬ 
fessedly does not exist at all.” 
We have followed our politico-medical doctors far enough to 
see and demonstrate just what their medical status is. That 
showm, we will leave to others to say what their political status 
really is. 
Both take the position that if a disease is inflammation of the 
lungs it is not contagious. 
1st. Will they deny that inflammation of the lungs is a very 
frequent condition in measles , in influenza , hi pulmonary tubercu¬ 
losis , in pulmonary actinomycosis , in pulmonary and pleuritic 
syphilis f Are these diseases , therefore , not contagious f It must 
be noted here that veterinarians do not claim that the cattle dis¬ 
ease is a simple inflammation of the pleura and lungs, but a spe¬ 
cific, infectious fever, in which these parts become the seat of 
micrococcus growth and inflammation—a veritable lung plague , a 
lungenseuche , as the Germans call it. In representing it as simple 
pleuro-pneumonia, the political doctors are merely raising a man 
of straw. 
~ 2d. Has it not long been held by scientific physicians that 
croupous or lobular pneumonia in man has all the characters of a 
specific and contagious disease ; its propagation in localties and 
families, its tendency to affect common and successive occupants 
of the same bed (Russell, United States Sanitary Commission 
Memoirs) ? Have they never heard of the advocacy of the infec¬ 
tious nature of pneumonia by Jurgensen, Sturges, Cohnheim, 
Heidenhain, Sommerbrodt, Schuppel, Klebs, and others among 
the most eminent of recent observers ? 
3d. Have they never heard the black death of the middle ages 
attributed to an epidemic of pneumonia ? 
4th. Have they never heard of Dr. Dawson’s observations on 
