370 
INOCULATION FOR THE LUNG PLAGUE, ETC. 
Reason and experience agree in showing that the virus of lung 
plague may be communicated from inoculated to uninoculated cat¬ 
tle, and may be laid up and preserved in the stables where inocu¬ 
lation has been practiced, to infect uninoculated cattle that may 
be brought into such stables at a later date. 
Can the stables infected by the inoculation of all the cattle of 
a State be perfectly disinfected t —Knowing what we do of the 
city cow stables and country barns that would be infected by a 
general adoption of inoculation, he would be a bold man who 
would assert that it would be possible to thoroughly disinfect all 
of those. The removal and disinfection of hay, straw and other 
fodder, the destruction of all rotten wood, the removal of wooden 
floors, and of the saturated earth beneath them, the re-inoculation 
of all subjects that fail to take at the first attempt, the rigid quar¬ 
antine of all herds until the effects of the inoculation have passed 
off, the inoculation of all calves or other fresh cattle introduced 
into such herds, the maintenance of sick animals and infected 
places for the obtaining of fresh virus for constant use,— would 
render the measure far more expensive, unwieldy, and uncertain 
than at first sight appears. In the method of extinguishing the 
disease bv the sacrifice of the sick, disinfection is demanded in 
*j y 
such places only as the sick have occupied, or where their products 
have been carried. Even in such circumstances, and with a very 
limited number of infected places, disinfection is often found to 
prove a difficult problem. But with a general inoculation, every 
bovine animal becomes an infected animal, and every building or 
place where such an animal is kept, becomes an infected place. 
To take but a single city, like that of New York, with its thous¬ 
ands of herds, kept in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, many of 
them unknown and unregistered by the city authorities, with many 
of the owners unfavorable to the practice, and inclined to throw 
obstacles in the way, it would be an exceedingly difficult process ; 
but when extended to country districts, where cattle are often 
turned out in woods and swamps, where it is exceedingly difficult 
to find them, it is inevitable that numbers would be overlooked 
and missed, to be infected later by the inoculated cattle in the 
same or adjoining enclosures, and to keep up the poison for the 
new comers in the shape of calves and fresh purchases. 
