CONTAGIOUS PLEUEO-PNEUMONIA IN NEW YORK. 
255 
To explain the great extension of this disease within the last 
few years, it will be necessary to enter into some details regarding 
the peculiarities of the cow trade as carried on in this vicinity 
before Gen. Patrick’s appointment. 
The fresh cows arrived in New York by boats on the Hudson 
River from this State and from New Jersey, and by railroad from 
northern and western New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 
and were sold on the docks and at the railroad yards by speculators 
to dealers and transferred to the stables of the latter. The busi¬ 
ness between the dealer and the dairyman is almost invariably 
done on credit, the frequent losses of the dairies making it next 
to impossible to get sufficient means ahead to pay cash. 
The dairyman in need of a fresh cow applied to his dealer 
and was furnished one on trial, represented to be in possession of 
all good qualities and a deep milker. A couple of weeks later 
this cow would be returned to the dealer, not proving such a 
milker as warranted, and she was placed once more on sale in the 
dealer’s stable, mingling with his other stock. In many instances 
the dairy in which this cow had been tried had lost cows from 
pleuro-jpneumonia contagiosa , and was consequently an infected 
place. 
We have now an infected cow transferred from an infected 
place to cohabit in a dealer’s stable with cows offered for sale, 
conveying the contagion both to them and the stable. Now this 
lot of infected animals was sent out, as opportunity occurred, to 
other dairymen on trial, contaminating all susceptible animals 
with which they came in contact. Disease and death followed 
the trail of this pernicious system. 
Another phase of this business was the peddling of cows on 
the roads by dealers, and many a herdsman has bitterly repented 
the buying of such animals and placing them in their own healthy 
herds. An instance of this may be cited with profit. In 1872 
Frank Divine, of Old Farm House Hotel, Westchester, N. Y., 
bought a cow from a peddler passing his farm, which soon sickened 
and died, the disease extending to the rest of the herd, and in 
seven months he lost thirty-six cows from pleuro-pneumonia. 
Many stories of a like nature have been told me by the sufferers 
