CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF ANIMALS. 
107 
slaughter of the sick, and where it was loudly claimed that it had 
extinguished the plague, I found in my recent visit that the 
abattoir was presenting frequent examples of lungs from city 
dairy cows with the characteristic lesions of lung plague. In 
Holland, where the compulsory inoculation is also supplemented 
by slaughter, the fat cattle from the great feeding stables fre¬ 
quently furnish, when killed, the unmistakable lesions of the 
same disease. Nor is this at all surprising. The inoculated 
poison propagated in the tissues of the tail protects the individ¬ 
ual system, but also secures the multiplication of the germs and 
their preservation in the stables, so that when an animal freshly 
introduced and inoculated fails to take, and to be protected, it 
has every opportunity of contracting the disease, in the ordinary 
way, in the lungs. The same results obtain where inoculation is 
practised on a large scale upon cattle exposed in open pasturages. 
Mr. Watson states as his experience in Australia and New 
Zealand that on the occasions when large herds of thousands and 
tens of thousands had been inoculated, a certain number of 
animals always failed to be brought in, and among these uninoc¬ 
ulated animals there was in every case a very heavy percentage 
of loss after they had mingled with the inoculated. Mr. Corbet 
gives the same testimony concerning his experience in Natal. 
“ The disease,” he says, “ is always lurking about, and intro¬ 
duced to a greater or less extent each time of inoculation.” 
This is the greatest objection to inoculation as usually prac¬ 
ticed. It is a means of multiplying the disease germs, and while 
it protects the inoculated animal it furnishes material for the 
infection of every susceptible animal that may be brought into 
contact with it, or with the premises where it has been. Inocu¬ 
lation is admissible as a means of self-protection by the individ¬ 
ual owner, in cases where the Government or local authorities 
take no efficient steps for the stamping out of the disease, but it 
is bad policy when our object is the complete extinction of the 
malady, and when we are adopting other measures well calcu¬ 
lated to secure this end. One thought more on this subject. 
From herds in which inoculation is permitted, no animal should be 
allowed to pass our condemnation except to immediate slaughter. 
