PLEURO-PNEUMONIA

The cattle plague, which is creating so much anxiety throughout the Eastern States, is a contagious fever, affecting cows chiefly, characterized by extensive exudations into the respiratory organs, and attended by a low typhus inflammation of the lungs, pluræ, and bronchia. It has prevailed in Europe for ages, at times developing into wide-spread scourges, causing incalculable loss. It was imported into England in 1839, and again three years later; and it was estimated that within twenty-five years thereafter the losses by deaths alone in England had amounted to $450,000,000. In 1858 the disease was carried to Australia by an English cow, and, spreading to the cattle ranges, almost depopulated them.

In 1843 an infected Dutch cow brought the disease to Brooklyn, where it has since lingered, slowly spreading among the cattle in Kings and Queens counties. In 1847 several head of infected English cattle were imported into New Jersey, and, spreading among a herd of valuable cattle, made it necessary for them all to be slaughtered, the only certain method of stamping out the disease. In 1859 four infected cows were imported into Massachusetts from Holland; the plague spread rapidly, and was stamped out only by persistent effort, the State paying for over 1,000 slaughtered cattle. Since 1867 the disease has not been known there. Meantime the pest had invaded Eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, where it has since prevailed in isolated localities. The absence of large herds of moving cattle in these districts, except for speedy slaughter, has prevented the disease from developing into a general plague.

The recent action of the British Council in forbidding the importation of American live cattle is likely to prove of inestimable benefit to this country, in forcibly calling attention to the grave risk that the presence of the disease on Long Island and elsewhere constantly entails. Fortunately the drift of the cattle traffic is eastward, and as yet there has been no propagation of the poison in the great cattle ranges of the West. Unless summarily arrested, however, the disease will surely reach those sources of our cattle supply, and occasion losses that can be estimated only in hundreds of millions of dollars.

The experience of all countries into which this disease has gained access appears to prove that there is only one way of getting rid of it—namely, the immediate killing of all infected cattle, and the thorough disinfection of the premises in which they are found.

The disease is purely infectious, and is never found in regions where it has not gained a foothold by importation. Palliative measures have in every instance failed to eradicate the disease, and are only justifiable, as in Australia, after the plague has reached dimensions utterly beyond the reach of any process of extermination.

Professor Law, of Cornell University, one of our best informed veterinary surgeons, most emphatically opposes every attempt to control the disease by quarantining the sick or by the inoculation of the healthy. "We may quarantine the sick," he says, "but we cannot quarantine the air." To establish quarantine yards is simply to maintain prolific manufacturers of the poison, which is given off by the breath of the sick, and by their excretions, to such an extent that no watchfulness can insure against its dissemination. Besides, the expense of thorough quarantining operations would amount to more than the value of the infected animals whose lives might be saved thereby. Inoculation is still less to be tolerated at this stage of the pest.

The Professor says: "Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, and England, have been treating the victims of this plague for nearly half a century, but the result has only been the increase of disease and death. Our own infected States have been treating it for a third of a century, and to-day it exists over a wider area than ever before. Contrast this with the results in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the disease has been repeatedly crushed out at small expense, and there can be no doubt as to which is the wisest course. As all the plagues are alike in the propagation of the poison in the bodies of the sick, I may be allowed to adduce the experience of two adjacent counties in Scotland when invaded by the rinderpest. Aberdeen raised a fund of £2,000, and though she suffered several successive invasions, she speedily crushed out the poison wherever it appeared by slaughtering the sick beasts and disinfecting the premises. The result was that little more than half the fund was wanted to reimburse the owners for their losses, and the splendid herds of the county were preserved. Forfar, on the other hand, set herself to cure the plague, with the result of a universal infection, the loss of many thousands of cattle, and the ruin of hundreds of farmers. Finally the malady was crushed out in the entire island by the method adopted by Aberdeen and other well advised counties at the outset."

And again, "Cattle have been inoculated by the tens of thousands in Belgium and Holland, and of all Europe these are the countries now most extensively infected. France, Prussia, Italy, Austria, and England have each practiced it on a large scale, and each remains a home of the plague. Australia has followed the practice, and is now and must continue an infected country. Our own infected States have inoculated, and the disease has survived and spread in spite of it, and even by its aid. Whatever country has definitively exterminated the plague (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holstein, Mecklenburg, Switzerland, Massachusetts, and Connecticut), that country has prohibited inoculation and all other methods that prevail on the principle of preserving the sick, and has relied on the slaughter of the infected and the thorough disinfection of their surroundings. So will it be with us. If any State adopts or allows any of these temporizing measures, that State will only repeat the experience of the past alike in the Old World and the New, will perpetuate the disease in the country, will entail great losses on its citizens, will keep up the need for constant watchfulness and great expense by the adjoining States for their own protection, and will indefinitely postpone the resumption of the foreign live stock trade, which, a few months ago, promised to be one of the most valuable branches of our international commerce."

We are persuaded that the position taken by Professor Law, and other similar-minded veterinary surgeons, is the only safe one. The disease can be stamped out now with comparatively small loss. If trifled with, and tolerated, it cannot but result in a great national calamity.

SPAIN A FIELD FOR MACHINERY AND PATENTS

From a too lengthy communication to admit in full to our columns, a resident of Madrid communicates to the Scientific American some facts relative to the fertility of the soil of Spain, her necessity for improved agricultural and other implements, and closes with the assertion that it is a good field withal for patents. We cull from the letter as follows:

I have lived, says the writer, for a number of years in this beautiful country, so little understood by foreigners, so little appreciated by its own inhabitants. The Spain of romance, poetry, and song, is the garden as well as the California of Europe. But it stands in great need of the health-giving touch of the North American enterprise. We have here the same mineral treasures, the same unrivaled advantages of climate, that made Spain once the industrial and commercial emporium of the world.

But Spain is awakening. She is endeavoring to shake off her lethargy. The late Exhibition of Paris has proved this; and those who are familiar with the past history and present condition of Spain have been astonished at the result of this effort. A new era has commenced for the country, and it is everywhere evident that a strong current of enterprise and industry has set in. But it is with nations, as with individuals, when they have remained long in complete inaction, brain and muscles are torpid and cannot at first obey the will. Spain needs the assistance of other nations hardened and inured to toil.

The plows now used to till the land are precisely such as were those left by the Moors in the unfinished furrow, when with tears and sighs they bade farewell to their broad fields, their mosques and palaces, whose ideal architecture is still the wonder of the world, to go forth as outcasts and exiles in obedience to the cruel edict that drove them away to the deserts of Africa.

I doubt whether there is an American plow in Spain, much less a steam plow. Sowing and reaping machines are here unknown, and grain is tread out by oxen and mules just as it was in Scripture times, and cleaned by women, who toss it in the air to scatter the chaff. Everything is primitive and Oriental here as yet.

Spain could supply all Europe with butter and cheese, and, on the contrary, these articles are imported in large quantities from England, Holland, and Switzerland. The traveler crosses leagues and leagues of meadow land where not a tree is to be seen, nor one sheep pasture, and which are nevertheless watered by broad rivers that carry away to the ocean the water that would, by irrigation, convert these fields into productive farms. There are many places in Spain where the wine is thrown away for want of purchasers and vats in which to keep it. In the Upper Aragon, the mortar with which the houses are built is made with wine instead of water, the former being the most plentiful. Aragon needs an enterprising American company to convert into wholesome table wine the infinite varieties there produced, and which our neighbors the French buy and carry away to convert into Bordeaux.

We want American enterprise in Galicia and Asturias, where milk is almost given away, to convert it into the best of butter and cheese; and also in those same provinces, where delicious fruit is grown in such abundance that it is left on the ground for the swine.

Spain needs many more railroads and canals, all of which, when constructed, are subsidized by the government; the railroads at the rate of $12,000 a kilometer, and many more additional advantages are offered for canals.

With regard to commerce with Spain, we have to lament the same indifference on the part of the Americans. I have, for instance, an American double-burner petroleum lamp. All who see it admire and covet it, but they are not to be had here. If we except one American in Madrid, who brings mostly pumps and similar articles on a very small scale, we have no dealers in American goods here. Wooden clothes pins, lemon squeezers, clothes horses, potato peelers, and the hundreds of domestic appliances of American invention, elsewhere considered indispensable, are in Spain unknown.

We had confidently expected that the new Spanish law on patents would draw the attention of American inventors toward this country, that to-day offers a wide field for every new practical invention, but I am sorry to see that, with the exception of Edison and a few others, the Americans have not yet availed themselves of the easy facility for taking patents for Spain, where new inventions and new industries are now eagerly accepted and adopted. And while the Americans are thus careless as to their own interests, the French take out and negotiate, in Spain, American patents with insignificant variations.

Let American inventors be assured that any new invention, useful and practical, and above all, requiring but little capital to establish it as an industry, will find a ready sale in Spain.

I could enlarge to a much greater extent upon the indifference of American inventors, merchants, manufacturers, and business men, as to the market they have in Spain in their respective lines, and upon the importance of building up a trade with this country, but to do so would require more space than I think you would feel justified in occupying in your columns.