354 
EDITORIAL. 
escapes certain peculiar interferences and objections, and insur¬ 
mountable obstacles are not put in his way; and if he receives 
the assistance and countenance to which he is entitled from the 
people, and from the membership of his profession, he may yet 
achieve a substantial success. Is this, however, to be the case ? 
Will the true character of the disease become fairly understood 
and admitted by all ? If we may judge from reports which we 
gather from some of the agricultural journals, it seems more than 
probable that there will be rebellion and opposition against the 
measures he has adopted, and that he will not always find the 
people as willing to pronounce a favorable judgment upon his 
work as it has at other times received. 
To a proposition, coming from the Chicago Live-Stock Ex¬ 
change, to test the question of the infectious nature of the dis¬ 
ease now prevailing in Illinois, Dr. Salmon replied in a long 
letter, which we publish to-day, not only because it gives the true 
history of the outbreak, but also because it shows the uselessness, 
in the opinion of that gentleman, of entering upon new experi¬ 
ments of the kind suggested. No one who is thoroughly 
acquainted with the disease, and who has followed the reports of 
its outbreak and progress in the West, can fail to agree with Dr. 
S. No further experiments are needed, and to resort to them 
now would be to a great extent a practical acknowledgment of 
previous error on the part of any veterinarian who should con¬ 
sent to lend the self-stultification of such an act. For this reason, 
the experiment which it has been proposed to undertake in the 
East, at Barren Island, must be stopped. If it is allowed to pro 
ceed, people may reasonably ask to be enlightened as to the 
necessity of accepting one and repudiating the other, and the 
only plausible answer the question will admit will be that the 
disease of the East, which we have been recognizing as pleuro¬ 
pneumonia, is an entirely different one from that which exists in 
the West. 
We are also in fear lest Dr. Salmon should ere long encounter 
objections which may prove still more formidable than these, and 
which will not derive their importance from their own intrinsic 
soundness, but rather because they will have originated within 
