BRISKET DISEASE 
(Dropsy of High Altitudes.) 
Preliminary Report. 
INTRODUCTION. 
For a number of years the Station has received letters from 
stockmen, living in the mountainous region of Colorado, giving ac¬ 
counts of a disease in cattle in which the most prominent symptom 
seemed to be a swelling of the brisket. Outside of a few visits made 
by the Veterinarian of the Experiment Station and the State Vet¬ 
erinarian, nothing of importance was done to determine the nature 
of .the malady. In April, 1913, two South Park stockmen, Lew W. 
Robbins and David Collard, advanced one hundred dollars each, to 
be placed at the disposal of the Station for a study of the disease. 
Upon explanation of their action, the Park County Stockgrowers 
Association, which is composed of members who live at elevations 
of from eight to ten thousand feet, agreed to take over the expense 
and the two men were reimbursed. This money has been used only 
for work done in South Park and to meet incidental and traveling 
expenses. The Station has at all times paid the salaries of the men 
engaged in the work and furnished practically all of the necessary 
equipment. Since that time the State of Colorado' has by special 
appropriation added materially to the fund thus broadening the 
scope of the work. 
The work is still in progress and •much of the detail is pur¬ 
posely left out of this report to be embodied in a later and more 
technical treatise on the subject, the idea being to give in a later 
report a rather complete and exhaustive description since to our 
knowledge the disease, as such, has not been described. 
The plan of procedure mapped out was, first, to' determine 
whether the disease could be transmitted from one animal to an¬ 
other ; second, to find the cause; third, to make a complete study of 
its various manifestations; and fourth, to find a remedy. 
We are indebted to the two gentleman named above, to Messrs. 
George Clark, W. H. Lilley, Howard Wright and Archibald Head 
of Jefferson; to Mr. T. W. Forman of Divide; to H. L. Guiraud 
of Garo, and to Erhardt and Felding of Nathrop, for furnishing 
animals and rendering great assistance in the work. We are also 
under obligations to the Cox-Jones Commission Company of Den- 
