43568 
American Veterinary Review, 
'APRIL, 1884. 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF ANIMALS IN THE UNITED STATES. 
A Paper read at the Chicago Convention by Prof. J. Law, F.R.C.V.S., of 
lO Cornell University. 
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No more important question can to-day engage the attention 
OOpf the citizen or statesman than that of the contagious diseases of 
Zanimals, and the means of suppressing and extinguishing them. 
^This subject has been too long neglected, and is liable to continued 
neglect for the reason that those who suffer pecuniarily from these 
affections have a deep personal interest in keeping the extent, and 
even the very fact of their losses, a profound secret. The city 
milkman who loses from the bovine lung-plague in a single half- 
year a number of cows equal to the entire herd that he holds at 
any one time would drive his customers to other dairies and invoke 
financial ruin if he published the fact of his heavy losses. The 
horse-dealer would find his stock a drug in the market if he were 
injudicious enough to report that glandered animals had occupied 
his stalls. The flockmaster would throw away his chances of a 
remunerative sale if he let it be known that his sheep suffered 
from scab, lung-worms, or foot-rot. The swine-breeder might 
give up all hope of profit if he allowed that his herds were infested 
with trichinae or contaminated with swine-plague. Yet we well 
know that these are only examples of the animal contagia now 
existing among us, and that threaten the whole of the live-stock 
