THE RECENT CATTLE DISEASE IN KANSAS. 
201 
found to be still very circumscribed. Before I received an an¬ 
swer it transpired that the Commissioner of Agriculture had been 
notified and had sent Drs. Salmon and Trumbrower to Neosho 
Falls. The matter having been taken in hand by oue Department 
of the National Government, I concluded that it would be unde¬ 
sirable for a second Department to incur the unnecesary expense 
of an independent investigation, and submitted this reason in a 
letter addressed to yourself. 
Dr. Salmon concluded that the disease was dry gangrene > 
caused by feeding on ergoted hay, and on my visit to Washing¬ 
ton, March 31, I saw the specimens of diseased limbs which he 
had sent from Neosho Falls, and recognized them at once as cor¬ 
responding in every respect with the dry gangrene with which I 
am familiar as occurring in the Northeastern States from a similar 
cause. I further saw the specimens of badly ergoted hay which 
Dr. Salmon had taken from the farms occupied by the diseased 
herds in Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa, and became fully satisfied 
that the dreaded malady was after all only the comparatively 
familiar dry gangrene. 
Before reaching this conclusion I had telegraphed the Gov¬ 
ernors of Kansas and Missouri that the importance of the subject 
to the nation and to England demanded that the nature of the 
disease should be demonstrated in every separate outbreak by the 
inoculation of several sheep and swine. These would contract 
foot and mouth disease with almost unfailing certainty, whilst they 
fail to contract other affections which were likely to be mistaken 
for this. March 24 I had a telegram from Governor Crittenden, 
of Missouri, “ There is not a case of foot and mouth disease in 
Missouri. Experts pronounce disease frozen feet. Disease wonJt 
communicate .” Governor Glick, of Kansas, intimated that ex¬ 
periments would be made to test the communicability of the dis¬ 
ease by cohabitation and inoculation. 
Two weeks passed without the announcement of any positive 
results from these experiments in Kansas, and it seemed to be 
settled, not only that the prevailing affection was dry gangrene? 
but that no other disease developing so rapidly as foot and mouth 
disease coexisted with it. 
