156 
JAMES D. HOPKINS. 
lie sent his remaining herd to the butcher, where one of the In¬ 
spectors found one with the lesions peculiar to this disease, when 
killed. 
Heason and experience agree in showing that the poison may 
be thus introduced into healthy stables, and therefore inoculation 
must be absolutely condemned whenever a speedy and effectual 
stamping out of the disease is desired. No country has ever suc¬ 
ceeded in exterminating this plague by practising inoculation. 
The most ardent votaries of the practice, Belgium, Holland, Prus¬ 
sia, England, Australia, South Africa, New York, and New Jer¬ 
sey have preserved the plague for decades in spite of the most 
earnest efforts of this kind. 
Let no one delude himself with an idea of similarity to vacci¬ 
nation for small-pox. In the Jennerian vaccination it is a mild, 
safe disease (cow-pox) that is conveyed, and the vaccinated indi¬ 
vidual can never become the center for the diffusion of small-pox. 
But in lung plague it is the virulent matter of the disease itself 
that is inoculated, and the process would find its counterpart in 
the inoculation of the infant with genuine small-pox virus. By 
this a mild small-pox would be produced which the majority of 
infants would survive, but in the clothing, air and buildings would 
be scattered the virus of small-pox, that would prove infecting to 
all susceptible people. 
For generations the means of successfully arresting the rav¬ 
ages of this pestilence have engaged the best veterinary talent in 
Europe, and the results of their observations have been placed on 
record for the guidance of the profession ; and the Legislature of 
the State of New York, in enacting the law that called the Com¬ 
mission into existence to stamp out ” contagious pleuro-pneumo- 
nia, did so after mature deliberation and consultation with some 
of the best cattle pathologists in the world. They early recog¬ 
nized that such an extensive country as the United States cannot 
afford any palliative measures, that will expose forty millions of 
cattle to this dread scourge; hence the law to stamp out. 
To stamp out contagious pleuro-pnenmonia in a locality where 
it has existed for years, is no slight undertaking, and opposition 
may be expected from people whose interests will be interfered 
