550 
PEOF. LAW. 
“ diggins,” or in the blackfellows’ dens ? If there is one fact 
Held more strongly than another by the medical men of to-day, it 
is that they know small-pox only as the result of contagion. 
His selection of lung plague is equally unfortunate. If he 
had looked into my monograph on “ lung plague ” he would have 
found that in dealing with the disease in New York and Brook¬ 
lyn we found no cases in the crowded stock yards among the 
steers that had traveled from the West and endured all the priva¬ 
tions of a railway journey of 1,000 miles and upwards under the 
broiling sun of July or in the chill colds of December. It was 
found in the dairy cows of the city, recruited largely from the 
same State, and even in these it did not appear till they had 
passed a period of several weeks in the city cow-sheds or in the 
suburban pastures. The privations of their short journey had 
long passed and their effects ceased, and there had been a long 
incubation of the germ taken in after their arrival before they 
showed any symptoms of lung plague. He would have found 
from the same monograph that the period of the greatest preva¬ 
lence of the disease was not in winter nor spring, when the cows 
had long been confined to their filthy cow-sheds and denied con¬ 
tact with neighboring herds, but in the late summer and autumn, 
after they had been ranging the unfenced pastures all the sum¬ 
mer and mingling with other herds and giving and receiving 
infection. 
If he had read the report of the Treasury Cattle Commis¬ 
sion, published in 1882. he would have found that in the previous 
year we examined the herds in the great Western cities, and 
though we found close cow-houses and filth that exceeded even 
those of New York and Brooklyn, we could find no trace of lung 
plague. It is only after the importation into the Mississippi 
Valley of the infected Jersey cows from Maryland in the year 
1883, that any trace of lung plagne has been discovered west of 
the Alleghenies. The filth theory and its author are therefore 
directly contradicted by the facts of the case. 
If Drs. Swinburne and Gallinger will take the first report of 
the Treasury Cattle Commission (1882), they will find all the evi¬ 
dence necessary from the history of this disease in the old world 
