78 
CORRESPONDENCE 
The method was inaugurated in England in the early part of 
the eighteenth century by advice of Mr. Bates, surgeon to the 
Royal Household, for stamping out rinderpest. It was again 
successfully adopted in the middle of that century to root out a 
new importation. 
It was a third time put in force in 1866, and a fourth in 1877, 
to suppress invasion of the same plague. It was repeatedly re¬ 
sorted to to cut short ovine variola on English soil, and it is now 
being put in force against the lung fever. On the Continent of 
Europe it is now recognized as the only economical and effective 
mode of dealing with rinderpest, and the following countries have 
successfully resorted to it for the extinction of the bovine Inner 
plague: Switzerland, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Schleswig-Hol¬ 
stein, Denmark, Norway and Sweden and the plague-stricken 
Holland herself is now putting it in practice. In America it has 
been repeatedly successful in Massachusetts and Connecticut. It 
is doubtless possible to surround patients and these products 
with disinfectants, to secure a certain percentage of recoveries, 
and let the malady expire by its own self limitation, but the 
expense of such a course would far exceed the value of the ani¬ 
mals saved, and when attempted on a large scale, over half a 
dozen different states, it would be subject to incessant lapses and 
failures, and would thus become a means of spreading the disease. 
All sanitarians must admit that method is the best which will 
most speedily and effectually extinguish the poison, and do this at 
the cheapest rate. All of these conditions are met by the stamp¬ 
ing-out process, and whatever retards or hinders this is essentially 
unsanitary and wasteful. Into the domain no moral question in¬ 
trudes ; it is a purely pecuniary question, and if it could be solved 
by the slaughter, not of the sick only, but of all the cattle in the 
infected districts, it would be a much more economical course than 
to allow the malady to spread till it reaches our open Western 
ranges, where all attempts at stamping out would only repeat the 
disastrous failures of the steppes and of the unfenced African and 
Australian pastures. 
Yours &c., 
James Law. 
