4. In an economical point of view it would have been unwise, so far as this herd was concerned, to kill all the animals as soon as exposed; whether we have regard to the value of the animals recovered, or the number which apparently became diseased in consequence of exposure.

These are the conclusions to which a believer in the contagious nature of the disease would assent.

A believer in epidemic or local influences as a cause of the disease would object that the experiments are not conducted at a sufficient distance [six miles] from the place where it is known to be rife; that pleuro-pneumonia is epidemic among pigs in the immediate vicinity; that epidemic pleuro-pneumonia among human beings has been known to extend over the whole of New England and New York. In fine, that the herds of Waltham are subject to similar influences as those in Cambridge, differing in degree.

These experiments have been undertaken not without considerable expense and trouble; they are offered as a contribution to our knowledge of a most important disease among cattle, with the hope that they may be continued until definite results shall be arrived at, not only as to its contagion or non-contagion, but also with regard to other points interesting in an economical point of view, and not less so as it bears upon the study of comparative pathology. I have the honor to be,

Your Excellency's obedient servant,

CAMBRIDGE, December 23, 1863.

MORRILL WYMAN.

AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT, STATE HOUSE,
BOSTON, December 24th, 1863.

DEAR SIR, The disease commonly called pleuro-pneumonia, still exists among the herds of some twelve or fifteen towns of this Commonwealth. The importance of an early consideration of the facts connected with its introduction and spread, can hardly be overstated, whether we regard it in a pecuniary or in a sanitary point of view. If we are to give up all effort to eradicate it, we must settle down into the conviction that we shall soon find ourselves in the condition of those countries in Europe where this disease exists, and from which it is now, probably, too late to atttempt to get rid of it, owing to the fabulous amount of the cost.

What is that condition? The most moderate estimates fix the loss by pleuro-pneumonia alone, in the British Isles, at ten millions of dollars year. The value of cattle lost by that disease amounts to two or three times the value of all the cattle imported. More than a million head of horned cattle died of pleuro-pneumonia in the six years ending with 1860, of a value of at least sixty millions of dollars. Nor is there any falling off, but on the other hand a rapid increase, so that in 1862 the prevalence of the disease, owing to sales in the markets and at the fairs, was greater than it had ever been known before. In one week, about the time I was in London, more than nineteen tons of diseased meat were discovered in that market alone.

These are startling facts, but they do not represent the whole truth. They fall far short of it, for we must consider the contamination of the animal food and of the dairy products of the kingdom, and the almost universal demoralization among a very large class of farmers, dealers and butchers, affecting the whole community, consequent on the reckless. traffic in diseased meat.

"Horned cattle," says a recent Report made to the Lords in council of Great Britain, "horned cattle affected with pleuro-pneumonia are much oftener than not, slaughtered on account of the disease, and when slaughtered are commonly, except their lungs, eaten; and this even though the lung disease has made such progress as to taint the carcass."

"At present there is a keen competition for a cow affected in the last stage of pleuro-pneumonia, and with an ever-increasing scarcity of animal food, it is of daily, or rather of hourly, occurrence, that diseased town dairy cows realize from five to twenty pounds sterling."

"Life stock insurance companies were formed immediately after the importation of foreign diseases, and these companies found, what farmers had discovered, that it was better to kill for the butcher than to treat animals affected with disease, so that in many ways, the slaughter of diseased stock as human food has been sanctioned and encouraged."

Professor Gamgee, a man of high scientific attainments. as a veterinarian, and having the confidence of the British government as such, says:

"The traffic in diseased animals is impoverishing stockholders and the country at large. My calculations, made under the most favorable circumstances, show that the United Kingdom never loses less than eight millions sterling (forty millions of dollars,) by disease amongst cattle, sheep, and pigs. Half that loss is annually due to foreign contagious diseases."

"The meat-consuming public is paying fifty millions of dollars a year more now, for the same amount of meat, than it did in 1841, the year before the importation of the disease."

"One inspector (of markets,) said that if he was called upon to exclude from market animals affected with contagious diseases, he must exclude two thousand animals out of Islington market on many a Monday morning."

"It was altogether a mistake to believe that diseased meat is sold to the poor. There are many diseased cattle eaten, whose real state could only be told at the time of slaughter.”

The contamination of the animal food supplies, "has affected the health of the people to an extent becoming more and more appreciated the more the subject is investigated."

"The tens of thousands of carcasses of diseased animals, sold in large towns, are stealing life from human beings when and where we least expect it."

"Last year," says Gamgee, employed in extensive investigations under the authority and direction of the government, "my opinion became confirmed that the flesh of cattle affected with pleuro-pneumonia, when eaten by man, induces boils and carbuncles to an incredible extent."

His observations were carried on in three establishments -one where fifteen hundred men were known to be supplied with diseased meat; another where several hundred soldiers were in a similar condition; and another where seventy persons fed on the flesh of cattle diseased with pleuro-pneumonia. They were "seized occasionally with vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pains, &c., and have traced such accidents to the meat to such an extent that many refused to eat it. Circumstances compel me to withhold farther details."

What a record do these extracts contain! Can any one, after reading them, and innumerable others of a similar import might be added,-avoid the conclusion that any thing which may be said or done that shall have the effect to retard prompt and energetic action for the removal of this great curse, now that we have it in our power, is a monstrous play upon human life?

I could give innumerable details to show the similar condition of France, and, in fact, of nearly every country of Western Europe, were it desirable.

But to return. If we have determined to give up all effort to eradicate the disease, as the course of the last legislature would seem to imply, we should, at least, take some action to protect ourselves from the sale of the products of diseased animals thrown upon our markets in

the shape of milk and beef, which has already happened, and which is sure to increase.

The law, as it now exists, is quite inadequate for the protection of the community, as the experience of the past few months has shown. The municipal jurisdiction of the officers of towns is too limited to enable them to work efficiently, even if they were, in all cases, fully prepared, with a requisite knowledge of the disease, to grapple with the facts as they are brought to their notice. But in most cases they are not, and they find themselves embarrassed with duties to perform under the law, with a jurisdiction limited to town boundaries, with no power to put men under oath to elicit the truth, and during the hesitation and delay, incident, perhaps, to imperfect knowledge of their powers and duties, the discase gets beyond their reach by the driving of animals over the town limits, to the great markets or elsewhere, carrying contagion in their way, and infecting other herds. An animal worth less than twenty-five dollars may thus, as has been the case the past season, convey the infection to and destroy two or three thousand dollars worth of stock. If the evil ended here, it might be borne; but each animal so infected may go out into the community and become a new centre for the distribution of the disease. The injury has no fixed limit, unless we suppose every owner of stock too honest to attempt to realize the full value of an animal that he begins to get suspicious of.

If there could be a cordial and united co-operation on the part of the community, there is still a reasonable certainty that this disease could yet be extirpated.

It is not too much to say that a small appropriation made by the last legislature, from three to five thousand dollars, would have kept the disease wholly in check, if indeed, it had not entirely eradicated it. Now a moderate estimate of the losses during the past season, to individuals, the towns and the State, would be at least ten thousand dollars, and in all probability they have been twice or three times that

sum.