STAMPING OUT PLEURO-PNEIJMONIA IN NEW YORK. 
155 
they were promptly slaughtered, and the balance of the herd 
closely quarantined and fumigated daily with burning sulphur, 
and the buildings thoroughly disinfected. We have found that 
this treatment, when properly carried out, checks the spread of 
the contagion to those animals not yet affected, and is more effica¬ 
cious than inoculation, for the suppression of the plague. But, if 
other herds, by this process not being done properly, were 
endangered, then the whole infected herd were at once sent to 
the butcher. On farms in the country, where only a fence separates 
the cattle, immediate slaughter of sick and exposed is the price of 
safety. 
Inoculation was introduced twenty-nine years ago by Dr. 
Williams, of Belgium, as a prophylactic of this plague, but, 
after a thorough investigation in Europe, it proved unreliable. 
Almost all advocates of inoculation deny that an inoculated 
animal is at all dangerous to others. In this they throw the 
gravest doubt on the value of the operation as a preservative. 
The liquids inoculated are the virulent products of the lung 
plague, and as these do not induce disease of the lungs but only 
of the tissues where they are inserted, it cannot be supposed that 
they exert any influence on the economy through any direct 
action on the normal seat of the disease. If protective at all, it 
must be by reason of the reproduction of the germs in the blood, 
or in the seat of inoculation. If in the blood, there must be 
danger of their being given off by the various free surfaces, and 
notably by the lungs. Reymal mentions the case of an inoculated 
cow at the Alfort Veterinary School, which infected two others 
standing with her. In a stable near Williamsbridge, Joseph 
Schwab keeps a herd of eighty milch cows, and has practiced 
inoculation for years, with good results, but last summer Mr. 
Schwab bought a fine young bull, which he thought he would not 
inoculate. Ten weeks later the bull died of contagious pleuro¬ 
pneumonia. Again, Mr. W. J. Robinson, of Putnam Co., with 
a herd of forty head, declares that no sickness had occurred in 
his herd prior to our visit, but, in the excitement of the outbreak 
of the lung plague in that county, he had eight cows inocu¬ 
lated, Two died from the inoculation, and a few months after, 
