112 
CATTLE DISEASE IN INDIA. 
Sir,—I n the impression of the Madras Daily News, of 7th 
November, under the heading of “The Week,” I observed a 
long paragraph wherein is mentioned that Mr. Minchin, the 
Collector of Kurnool, had brought to the notice of Government 
the ravages among the cattle in his district from an enzootic 
disease, where the symptoms were violent purging, body 
covered with pustules, desquamation of hair, cuticle, &c. 
This gentleman, like all others who are ignorant of the 
nature of the malady, fancies it to be “ the same disease to 
cattle that smallpox is to man,” forgetting to start with the 
fact that smallpox, when passed through the bovine animal, 
is a harmless disease—so much so, that it frequently passes 
off without affecting rumination, one of the first symptoms 
of derangement in cattle; and next (I quote from the paper) 
he says, “among cattle it is highly infectious and conta¬ 
gious,” but he has not heard of its being either the one or 
the other between cattle and human beings. Now, cow-pox, 
as the illustrious Jenner first observed it on the hands of 
dairy maids, is communicatible to the human species : ergo , 
Where is the resemblance ? 
I find the collector encloses a letter from Captain Nelson, 
“in which that officer observes that, in this country, how¬ 
ever seriously a murrain may show itself, nothing is done— 
the people do nothing, the Government does nothing.” He 
goes on to show how the Home Government, two years ago, 
when the flocks of Wilts and Berkshire were attacked with 
smallpox, appointed a commission to inquire into and pre¬ 
vent the extension of the disease. True, but did the Home 
Government form their commission from medical, revenue, 
and commissariat officers, as the Revenue Board wisely 
recommends, or did they seek assistance from a proper 
source, viz., from the Royal Agricultural Society of Eng¬ 
land, who furnished their Professor of Cattle Pathology from 
the Royal Veterinary College ? 
I do not wish to throw cold water on the exertions of Mr. 
Minchin; but how, I ask, can a true diagnosis be arrived at 
by persons who have not been specially educated for the 
treatment of cattle, much more to treat the disease, supposing 
their diagnosis to be right? One might as well hand one’s 
watch over to a blacksmith to repair, or call in a “cow 
leech” to treat his wife or child. The board, in acknow¬ 
ledging these letters from Mr. Minchin (wherein he shows a 
reduction of half the cattle in the herds in the districts 
