CONTAGIOUS DISEASES AMONG DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
33 
THE SUPPRESSION OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASES 
AMONG OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
BY F. S. BILLINGS. 
It is certainly encouraging to the members of the veterinary 
profession to see indications of a movement in this direction in 
Congress. It should mean professional advancement in the right 
direction. Veterinary medicine finds its strength and gains 
public appreciation, not like human medicine, in the gratitude of 
the patient or his family, but in its ability to prevent, in a 
measure, individual or great national losses, and, what is still 
more important, its ability to prevent many serious diseases or 
unpleasant disturbances to the human organism. In other words, 
from the appreciative point of view, veterinary medicine is 
strong where human medicine is weak, and vice versa. It is of 
the utmost importance and interest to every public-spirited 
veterinarian that no serious mistakes be made in the formation of 
the so-called “Commissions” for the suppression of the diseases in 
cpiestion. What the profession desires, is advancement, as a 
whole, in public appreciation. In the appointment of Commis 
sions, or, rather, in the manner they have thus far been conducted, 
this end has been most signally lost sight of. The veterinarians 
who have been appointed to these positions have so conducted 
themselves as to magnify themselves and the Commission before 
the public, but the profession as a whole has gained nothing 
thereby. In Massachusetts we have had a “Cattle Commission’’ 
for some seventy years, but the whole work which has been done 
has been done by them, and no endeavor has ever been made to 
elevate the profession into notice by appointing, or seeking to 
appoint, local veterinary inspectors over the State, so far as the 
forces at their command would allow. In New York and New 
Jersey it is the same thing. The Commission would be all in all, 
and the veterinarians occupying the prominent positions have 
done nothing, that is, made no public endeavor, to be said that 
