508 
HENRY STEWART 
SPONTANEITY OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 
By IIenky Stewart. 
Hackensack, N. J., January, 1884. 
Editor Veterinary Review: 
My Dear Sir —Some time ago I promised to send yon a short 
article, intended to meet some criticisms made by your correspon¬ 
dents upon some articles of mine in the N. Y. Times. I have 
been so occupied, and have been so closely studying this matter, 
and have had so many cases brought to my knowledge from 
widely separated localities, that I have put off writing up to the 
present. But recently another article of mine has attracted the 
attention of the Maryland Breeders’ Association, who are en¬ 
gaged in procuring legislation in regard to contagious diseases, 
and has brought me into conflict with Dr. Ward, of Baltimore, 
(M.B.C.V.S.) 
The subject is very important, you will readily perceive, for if 
the law only takes notice of actual cases of disease, and leaves the 
pestiferous places where the disease is bred, it must necessarily 
be as inoperative as would a law which compelled yellow fever 
or cholera patients to be secluded, and leave the filthy, open drains 
and all the foulness of a city unnoticed. 
1 live in a district where pleuro-pneumonia is rife. It has 
been all around me; so has fowl cholera, even next door to me, 
but I feel entirely safe, as I have done when in my professional 
capacity I have spent weeks in the midst of a pestilence. And 
I am quite sure that until a law that authorizes the oversight of 
all the so-called “ hot beds of disease,” and enforces sanitary 
measures as a precaution, is procured, the plague will never be 
wholly removed. I herewith send you the article I promised. 
Some remarks of mine upon the probability of the spontane¬ 
ous origin of virulent contagious diseases, and generally of all 
that class of diseases which are believed to be due to the growth 
of virulent germs in the blood, have met with some rather severe 
criticisms in these columns. The weight of popular opinion in 
