anthrax or charbon; the malady sweeps through the herds like a fire over, the western prairies, and in a few weeks all is over. Yet it does not spread from herd to herd, it is only those animals which have crossed the deadly trail of the Gulf coast cattle that are affected.

In this connection I wish to direct your attention particularly to a fact that seems to have escaped the notice of others. Texas is an extremely large State; it embraces within its territory the most varied characters of soil and climate. In the southeast there is the low, flat, unhealthy Gulf district one hundred miles or more wide: then comes an undulating, hilly belt of an entirely different aspect and character two to three hundred miles across; finally, in the west and southwest there is a mountainous district of an almost equal width. It is only within recent years that the stockmen have crossed the middle belt and have found their way to the western. We have long had the best of reasons for believing that the eastern and southeastern parts of Texas were permanently infected with this disease, but until very recently we knew nothing about the western half of the State, because comparatively few cattle had been raised and driven from there. But if, as our most recent reports indicate, cattle can be taken from the northern States to the western part of Texas and remain there without contracting this disease; if droves from eastern Texas carry the infection there and destroy the native cattle the same as they do at the north, then it follows that the cattle of western Texas do not possess an immunity from this disease, that the ranges of that section are not yet permanently infected with it, that we have done injustice to Texas in attributing an evil to the whole State which only exists in a part of it. And this may help to explain to us why the spleen of animals killed for food at San Antonio and Fort Ringgold in the east were of the "consistence of jelly" or "all pulpy," while in the west they were firm and solid; it may also explain why no epizootic disease was reported from the east where the cattle are insusceptible, and why we get accounts of such at Presidio, at Fort Davis, at Fort Stockton, and at various points on the Pecos river. It also suggests the inquiry if it may not be as important to Texas as to any State in this Union to recognize the existence of this disease, to mark out the permanently infected district, and to take timely measures to stop the annual infection of her western ranges and herds, and what is of more importance, still, to check the encroachment of the permanently infected district upon them.

It is unnecessary for me to bring more evidence bearing on this point. I simply desire to prove to you that Texas cattle on their native ranges are affected with a disease having all the essential characters ascribed to the disease that they have been charged with disseminating among Northern herds. From an investigation extending over the past four years I know that the native cattle occasionally die from it in all parts of the permanently infected district of the South; but I know equally well that such cattle are very insusceptible to it, and that it seldom assumes epizootic characters among them. If they did not possess this immunity nine-tenths of the adult bovine population of the South would perish in a single summer. When, therefore, I defined this disease as "an exceedingly fatal epizootic," a definition to which Dr. Smith seems to have some objections, I referred, of course, to its effects upon susceptible cattle and not upon

those which in some way have acquired the power of resisting it. I might truthfully say that yellow fever is a terribly fatal affection, although as is well-known the inhabitants of Cuba who have recovered from one attack expose themselves to the disease with comparative safety; and yet the mortality from the most virulent attacks of yellow fever scarcely exceeds half of what we see with Texas cattle fever.

I have no desire to exaggerate the losses among the native cattle of the South; I will even admit that they are surprisingly small considering that the whole district is saturated with the germs of so deadly a plague-my object at present is simply to combat the idea that Texas cattle can be safely scattered over the great live stock sections of the North. And with this object in view, I care not if Dr. Smith were able to prove, which he is not, that a case of Texas fever has never occurred among the native cattle of Texas; and I care no more if he were able to prove, which he is not, that among all the cattle killed for food in that great State, not a single one presents the lesions of this disease; I am one of those who believe that we, as sensible men, must accept a fact, when it is demonstrated to be a fact, whether we as scientific men have a satisfactory explanation for it or not. It has been quite the fashion for medical men to say that it does not look reasonable that a healthy, or an apparently healthy steer could disseminate so fatal an infection; and again it does not look reasonable that animals which have been infected in this way should not in their turn infect others. I contend, however, that as scientific men we are obliged to face the facts, that we have no business to speculate as to the reasonableness of a phenomenon, but that it is our duty first of all to ask: Does it occur, or does it not?

The third conclusion in Dr. Smith's paper which I am forced to contest, is that the great mortality which attends the importation of cattle from the North, is due to an acclimating process in any proper sense of the term. So far from this being the case, I am satisfied from my observations that the great majority of such animals die from the disease called Texas fever, and that the change of climate has little or no influence on the result.

Consider, if you please, that cattle are frequently taken from Canada to Kentucky, Missouri or Kansas without any such disease resulting, while it is uniformly produced in those animals transferred from Kansas to Texas, from Missouri to Arkansas, from Tennessee to Mississippi, Alabama or Georgia; and yet, the changes in the latter cases are not nearly so extreme as in the former. But it is not necessary to move cattle as far as this, even to have just as fatal results as with those carried from New York to Texas. Beef-cattle which go from Northern Georgia to Savannah are affected to such an extent that they are only shipped in winter, and even then so many are affected before they are killed, that I have been informed the Board of Health has been considering if it would not be advisable to shut out such animals entirely, though they are the only really good beef which goes to that market. Animals shipped from Northern Georgia to Charleston suffer to an equal degree. So animals going from Middle Virginia to tidewater Virginia in the same latitude; from west of the Blue Ridge mountains in North Carolina to the middle section of the same State; from less than a hundred miles north of Atlanta to that city are afflicted to the same

extent. But what bears even stronger against the acclimation theory is the fact that animals which simply cross from the north to the south bank of the James river in a part of its course, or from the north to the south bank of the Staunton river in a part of its course, or from the north to the south bank of the Yadkin river, in a part of its course, suffer with the same symptoms and die in the same proportion as those which have been transported a thousand miles. It is not then the great difference in summer heat, in malarial emanations, in the character of the herbage and soil that induces the mortality among cattle taken to the South, since it occurs where the animals have been moved too short a distance to experience such changes.

The second consideration bearing against this conclusion is that the district in the South to which it is dangerous to take imported cattle is precisely that from which the native cattle carry infection when driven North. I have not yet investigated the infected district west of the Mississippi, but I have spent much time in locating it in the States east of the river, and I am satisfied that I can present this statement as a general law. I have traced losses in the counties directly north of the James river to cattle which came from directly south of it; I can say the same of the Staunton river; of the Blue Ridge mountains rising east and west instead of north and south; the same in regard to cattle carried from county to county in parts of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee; and wherever the cattle from one county have caused losses among the native cattle of an adjoining county, there was evidence to show that cattle from the latter county when carried to the former were very certain to contract this disease. In other words, there is an infected district in the South which may be accurately outlined, and if you take cattle from that district beyond its boundary line you spread the infection, though you only move them from farm to farm; and, conversely, if you take cattle from outside of that district across the boundary line, though you only move them from farm to farm, you render them liable to the same infection. The fact that the sick animals in the latter case have not been in contact with Southern cattle proves nothing—the disease is not contracted directly from other animals, but always from infected grounds.

The third consideration bearing upon this question, and the most important of all is, that the cattle which die in the South from the so-called acclimation fever have exactly the same symptoms and the same postmortem appearances as the cattle which die in the North from exposure to grounds infected by Texas cattle. Now, gentlemen, I appeal to you, is it not a sensible plan when you desire to know what is the matter with a man, or an animal either, to study the symptoms and compare them with those of familiar diseases, and, when you have an opportunity to study the post-mortem appearances as well? If you have a patient with the typical symptoms and lesions of diphtheria, I am satisfied you would pronounce it diphtheria, even though the individual had recently emigrated from Manitoba to Mexico. And so when I see animals recently imported into the South, and I have seen many such, standing with head down, ears lopped over, back arched, walking with a weak and staggering gait and voiding bloody urine, when in three or four days they die, and after death I find erosions on the internal coat of the stomach, distended gall-bladder, en

larged and yellow liver, greatly enlarged and pulpy spleen, engorged kidneys and yellow coloration of the fat and tissues generally, I am very much inclined—indeed I am very certain to pronounce the disease Texas, Spanish or Southern fever. I consider it then a point too firmly established to be successfully contested that Northern cattle taken to Texas and to many other parts of the South as well, suffer from Texas fever in about the same proportion and with the same symptoms as they would if on their native pastures they were exposed to Texan stock.

To recapitulate, I believe I have shown: First, that cattle in Texas killed for food quite frequently present lesions similar to those seen in Texas fever; Second, that Texas cattle on their native ranges occasionally suffer from Texas fever; and third, that the great mortality acknowledged to occur among cattle imported into the South is the result of Texas fever. After following Dr. Smith in his attempt to show that Texas cattle are remarkably healthy, that no disease prevails among them that would make them dangerous as sources of infection if driven to Northern markets, and that Northern animals imported into Texas die from the effects of change of climate, in other words that there is no such thing as Texas fever, one is somewhat surprised to find in the final paragraphs quotations from Dr. Rauch's report to prove that this disease may be transmitted from native to native cattle. In conclusion, we find the following quotation, which I doubt not has had more importance attached to it than Dr. Rauch supposed it merited when he unfortunately penned it. "The assertions that native cattle die of this disease, and do not communicate it to other native cattle; that Texas cattle are perfectly healthy, and still cause disease that is fatal to native cattle, and that they do not die of this disease, are such anomalies in the history of contagious diseases that, on general principles, we could not believe them."

To this statement Dr. Smith adds: "The legitimate deductions from the reliable facts and statements contained in this present report are entirely in harmony with the views enunciated by Dr. Rauch."

I must confess there is something about this concluding paragraph of the report that I do not understand. The whole tenor of what precedes is to show that there is no such thing as Texas fever; Dr. Smith sums this up very well when he says: "If so many assertions had not previously been made and so many witnesses heretofore cited, where Texas cattle, apparently healthy, had infected other cattle, mingling with them, crossing their line of march, or following them in their grazing grounds, the inference from the foregoing would be undoubted, that there was no danger to be apprehended to other cattle by exposure to cattle from Texas.”

How the "legitimate deductions" which go to show that there is no such thing as Texas fever can be "entirely in harmony" with Dr. Rauch's conclusions that Texas fever is communicable between native Northern cattle, that Texas cattle sometimes die of it and must be affected with it before they can convey it to Northern animals, is an enigma which I shall not attempt to solve. But I must protest against the assertion that the characters usually attributed to Texas fever "are such anomalies in the history of contagious diseases that on general principles we could not believe them."

Let us briefly review the so-called anomalies. First, Texas cattle possess

a very complete immunity from the disease. Is that an anomaly? I take up a work on human pathology and turning to yellow fever, almost the first sentence that strikes my eye reads something like this: "Yellow fever is emphatically a disease of the unacclimated; the natives in yellow fever districts possess an undoubted immunity from the disease," etc., etc. Surely Dr. Rauch is too well informed to have been ignorant of a fact so well-known and so indisputable, and, consequently, he could not have referred to this character. Secondly, Texas cattle apparently in good health carry an infectious principle to distant pastures. Is that an anomaly? I turn again to human pathology, and I read that people in apparently good health who have come from the cholera districts of the East and who have no other sign of disease than a slight diarrhoea, and who soon recover from this, undoubtedly convey cholera into uninfected countries. I read in one of the reports of this Association "That yellow fever is frequently transported from one seaport to another by ships on which no cases of disease have occurred, and by people who are not themselves sick," (vol. 6 p. 351.) Is it very remarkable then that an animal covered with a heavy coating of hair, and having a vast alimentary reservoir containing something like a barrel of miscellaneous material gathered from infected pastures, and which is not entirely replaced for weeks, but is scattered over the grounds wherever its possessor travels-is it very remarkable, I repeat, reasoning from the facts I have cited in regard to yellow fever and cholera, that the germs of Texas fever are carried either in the hair or in the alimentary reservoirs of Texas cattle?

Once more, I am unable to see such an anomaly as to make me reject this conclusion on general principles. Sick native cattle do not as a rule infect other native cattle with which they come in contact. Here, certainly, we must look for the extraordinary anomaly which is to cause us to reject the great mass of testimony, not only of unprofessional, but of those professional men who have carefully studied Texas fever. Again I consult human pathology, and I find it stated by the very best authorities that "persons going from a district where yellow fever prevails into a district where it does not exist, and becoming attacked in the latter, do not communicate the disease."

Now, I would be glad to know why, if this is such an anomaly with the one disease, it is not equally so with the other. When I add to this the well-known fact that Texas cattle do not convey the disease directly, but only by first infecting the pastures and runs, I think it will be apparent that even this character is not the anomaly which we were led to expect. An animal which has fed upon the infected pastures of the South, can infect other pastures, but no other animal can do this. That is apparently a simple expression of the fact—is there anything about it to cause its rejection on "general principles ?"

Permit me to say that there is nothing in Dr. Smith's facts which should lead any man to doubt the existence of the germs of a communicable fever at the South which are frequently carried long distances to infect pastures and destroy the greater part of the native cattle that frequent them. There is no direct evidence in his reports; he only attempts to show that Texas cattle are apparently and generally in good health, and that Northern cattle taken there die from the effects of change