SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 
\i 
Applications of Veterinary Research: With an Example. 
By Prof. HAROLD A, WOODRUFF. 
(1) 
The applications of science to industry are legion, and among them the one 
which brings knowledge of the causes, methods of treatment, and prevention of 
the diseases of stock, must clearly be of considerable importance to the Aus- 
tralian stock-owner. Australia owes more than she knows to the applications 
of veterinary science, and yet she is suffering immense losses in the stock indus- 
try which scientific research might be expected to mitigate or prevent. 
The geographical position of Australia has undoubtedly materially lessened — 
the incoming of animal disease, for importation of animals has been expensive, | 
and so has been confined to carefully nurtured and healthy pedigree stock. — 
Furthermore, the time interval between the last port of call and the first Aus- 
tralian port exceeds the incubation period of nearly all the great animal plagues, 
so that an outbreak of disease, and probably some deaths, are bound to occur 
on the ship if the infection was introduced in animals taken on at any foreign — 
port. 
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Again, for many years now effective quarantine, at first by the State, and 
later by the Commonwealth authorities, has been a powerful factor in keeping 
out infective diseases. But perhaps the most important protection has been the 
freedom of the stock of Great Britain and Ireland—the stock from which most — 
of our imported animals have come—from those animal plagues which have 
ravaged many other countries. In other words, the application of veterinary — 
science in the United Kingdom has had effects of great importance in Australia. 
Thus it comes about that Australia is free from such diseases as Glanders it | 
horses, Foot and Mouth Disease of ruminants, Rinderpest or Cattle-plague, and 
Rabies or Hydrophobia of the dog, Parenthetically it may be mentioned that — 
the last three of these diseases are non-existent in the United Kingdom, and the — 
first is decidedly rare and easily guarded against by special means, But, assum — 
ing that a large number of animals were being imported from different countries; ; 
the danger of introducing any of these diseases would be of a different degree, in | 
each case. ; 
Glanders is a slow insidious disease, taking months or years to develop s0 
as to be obvious clinically. Thus a horse apparently in perfectly good health — 
on leaving Europe might have the latent infection of glanders. No symptoms 
need develop during the voyage, but months after arriving in Australia the — 
evidence might be manifest. Nevertheless the danger of importing glanders is 
comparatively small, for by means of special biological tests its detection in the 
earliest stages is almost infallible. 
Rabies is in quite a different category, for here is a disease usually quite 
acute, and with an incubation period of about three weeks as a rule. One of 
the mysteries of the disease, however, is that this usual incubation may be 
greatly extended, and cases are recorded where the interval between infection— 
as after a bite from a rabid dog—and the development of symptoms has bee! 
as much as twelve months. Until the symptoms are shown, there is no know? 
method of diagnosis, and so a real danger exists, only to be overcome by pre’ 
venting all importation of dogs from countries where the disease is known to 
occur, and imposing a long quarantine on dogs even from clean countries. 
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