CONTAGIOUS PLEURO-PNEUMONIA IN NEW YORK. 185 
losses of the dairies making it next to impossible to get 
sufficient means ahead to pay cash. 
The dairyman in need of a fresh cow applied to his dealer 
and was furnished one on trial, represented to be in posses¬ 
sion of all good qualities and a deep milker. A couple of 
weeks later this cow would be returned to the dealer, not 
proving such a milker as warranted, and she was placed once 
more on sale in the dealer's stable, mingling with his other 
stock. In many instances the dairy in which this cow had 
been tried had lost cows from pleuro-pneumonia contagiosa, 
and was consequently an infected place. 
We have now an infected cow transferred from an infected 
place to cohabit in a dealer’s stable with cows offered for sale, 
conveying the contagion both to them and the stable. Now 
this lot of infected animals was sent out, as opportunity 
occurred, to other dairymen on trial, contaminating all sus¬ 
ceptible animals with which they came in contact. Disease 
and death followed the trail of this pernicious system. 
Another phase of this business was the peddling of cows 
on the roads by dealers, and many a herdsman has bitterly 
repented the buying of such animals and placing them in 
their own healthv herds. An instance of this mav be cited 
with profit. In 1872, Frank Divine, of Old Farm House 
Hotel, Westchester, N. Y., bought a cow from a peddler 
passing his farm, which soon sickened and died, the disease 
extending to the rest of the herd, and in seven months he 
lost thirty-six cows from pleuro-pneumonia. Many stories 
of a like nature have been told me by the sufferers in New 
York and Westchester counties within the last six months. 
Another means of spreading the disease was the custom 
of small dairies of pasturing their cows on the commons. 
Here herds belonging to different individuals grazed inno¬ 
cently together, and it has been my lot to detect the disease 
and trace it to this source, and even to find the affected 
animals on the commons. The people, of course, wondered 
how their cows contracted the disease. 
You can now fully understand, gentlemen, how easily this 
disease is transmitted from stable to stable in New York and 
Brooklyn—how from one or two original centres of contagion 
it h as been disseminated until now it has assumed such pro¬ 
portions as to be almost a national calamity. 
The authorities of New York State until quite recently 
took no notice of the existence of the disease in our midst, 
although repeatedly warned by veterinarians and the press. 
Some years ago Frank Leslie, publisher of an illustrated 
newspaper, called the attention of the public to the diseased 
