23 
Rinderpest though happily unknown on our Continent has cost Enrope, Asia and 
Africa many thousands of millions of dollars. Recently in England alone it swept off 
stock of the value of $40,000,000, in the short space of eighteen months. And what 
is there to protect us from a worse experience, while we are at liberty to import hides, 
hair, wool and other products from all parts of the world, and while live stock are to be 
admitted on the certificate of an American Consul alleging that he believed them sound 
at the period of embarkation ? Our executive are manifestly ignorant of the fact that 
animals may be shipped in the finest health apparently, yet with the seeds of the most 
fatal contagious diseases within them, which germs will develop with the most 
destructive results at a later period. It seems the hardest of lessons to learn that a 
square plug will not stop a round hole, and that the most accomplished and truest of 
men will only blunder if we set them to decide a question in a science, the rudiments 
of which they are ignorant. 
Similar to Rindeipest is Sheep-Pox.. Often and disastrously has it prevailed in 
Asia and Europe, and that it has not sooner reached us may be attributed rather to a 
fortunate chapter of accidents, than to any sufficient precautions against its importation 
in sheep, hides, wool, catgut and other products. 
The Malignant disease of the genitals is another of the exotic maladies of Asia 
and Europe, which may be imported at any time, and the advent of which is all the more 
likely that it may exist for a length of time in the system without any external manifes¬ 
tation, which would rouse the suspicion of the ordinary observer. In this respect it 
resembles lung fever, the germs of which may remain, for over two months, latent in 
the system, and the infected subject may meanwhile cross both the Atlantic and Amer¬ 
ican Continent, and arrive in the remotest states, in the finest apparent health. It is 
these insidious diseases that above all demand a careful examination, and quarantine of 
imported animals; for the promptly fatal maladies, such as Rinderpest, Sheep-pox, por¬ 
cine intestinal fever, Texas fever, malignant anthrax, malignant cholera, &c., rouse at 
once a panic in the community and insure some action in the premises. But lung fever 
crept unawares into the country and continues to lurk comparatively unnoticed among 
the herds of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and 
District of Columbia, but ready to burst out with deadly effect, so soon as it reaches our 
stock-raising regions and can spread with the busy currents of cattle traffic to the different 
states of the Union. So with the malignant disease of the genital organs ; once intro¬ 
duced—and nothing is easier or more likely—and it would lurk unsuspected for weeks 
or months in the bodies of mares and stallions, steadily extending by the act of coition, 
and infecting whole regions with a fatal disorder, all the more dangerous that in its ear¬ 
ly stages it would escape general observation, though virulently infecting from the out¬ 
set. 
The Exotic Aphthous fever, though comparatively lacking in records of mortality, 
is scarcely less to be dreaded and guarded against. The loss of condition and milk 
from this disease, varying from $5 to $20 per head in cattle, is no small item when we 
take into account the extreme virulence of the contagion, and how rare it is for an 
exposed beast to escape. But to this must be added the occasionally permanent injury 
to the feet, to the udder, and to the womb and product of conception, which very mate¬ 
rially enhances the loss. And we must further take into account that all cloven-footed 
animals are as susceptible as cattle and suffer in the same proportion, while other genera 
of animals and human beings even are obnoxious to the virus, and in case of the young 
fed on the warm milk, suffer often to a fatal entent. 
