&24 EDITORIAL. 
be again imported, when proper inspection would prevent its get¬ 
ting a foothold. To accomplish the desirable result of complete 
extermination, every State infected must adopt measures for 
destroying all animals affected with the disease, and quarantining 
all those exposed to the eontagium, for a period sufficiently long 
to warrant its complete extinction; and even assuming the 
incubative stage to be so long as fifteen months, as is claimed by 
Ziegler, of Switzerland, three years time would be ample in which 
to destroy the last vestige of this dread disorder. 
The prophylaxis of inoculation, efficient as it may be in an 
epizootic outbreak, certainly has no claims for adoption in con¬ 
nection with the disease as it now exists, for it would only prove 
one of the surest methods of spreading the disease, while our aim 
should be to confine it to its present quarters and there eradicate 
it at whatever cost the method may entail. 
In the meantime our export trade in cattle should not suffer, 
for the animals so used are not taken from the infected districts, 
and they reach the seaboard ready for embarkation without any 
serious risk of becoming infected, unless there be an exception to 
those crossing the State of New Jersey. Let the infected States 
institute effectual systems of quarantine, and the national govern¬ 
ment appoint competent veterinary inspectors for each port from 
which cattle are shipped, and our trade with England and other 
foreign countries can go on unimpeded. 
VETERINARY MEDICINE. 
The need felt by the veterinary surgeons throughout the 
United States to regulate the practice of veterinary medicine is 
too well known by our readers to be recalled to their minds; and 
there is perhaps none who recognize this fact more than those in 
the State of New York. Last year already, though veterinarians 
were only indirectly connected with it, a bill was presented before 
the Legislature at Albany, but through some unknown cause was 
pigeon-holed, and probably will never again be brought to light. 
The need still exists, and perhaps more than ever is strongly felt 
