Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1886 — More About The Pleuro-Pnenmonia Scare. [ARTICLE]

More About The Pleuro-Pnen-monia Scare.

Dr. Metcalfe, of Indianapolis, Secretary of the State Board of Health and Dr. D. E. Salmon, Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry, of Washington, have investigated the cattle disease in Clinton county and found it to be Verminous Bronchitis, or what oatile men call Hoose. It is contagious and said to be nearly as fatal as Pleuro-Pneumonia. In Boswell, Benton county, tbe same disease has also made its appearance, and is found to have oome from the same source as that in Clinton county, namely, a drove of calves shipped from Bluffton, Ohio. As to the reported cases in this county we are probably safe in saying that the disease from which Mr. Littlefield’s cattle suffered was neither the Pleuro nor tne fioose. It is true that he has written us a letter in which lie argues, in a rather indignant strain against the assumption that his cattle did not have the pleuropneumonia But, inasmuch as bet- . ter veterinary authorities than examined his cattle have been found to have been in error in regard to the disease in Clinton county, it is not improbable that there may have been a mistake in the diagnosis of his cattle also. He names Dr. D. H. Patton, Treat Durand and E. H. Briggs, of Remington, as gentlemen who examined the diseased cattle, and who all agreed that it was a lung disease; with symptoms of the pleuro-pneu-rnonia, but we presume that none of the gentlemen mentioned professes to be a competent veterinary physician, and perhaps none of them ever saw a genuine case of the pleuro-pneumonia. Mr. Littlefield also says that a veterinary surgeon examined the cattle ami pronounced the disease pleuro-pneumonia; but the truth is that mighty little dependence is to be placed on the knowledge of the most of the so called veterinary surgeons. About 95 per cent of them are the veriest quacks who scarcely know the difference between the blind staggers and a bog spavin.