If allowed at all, treatment should be conducted in an isolated locality, well secluded from visitors and wandering animals including birds, and under the most intelligent antisepsis. It should proceed on general principles according to the individual manifestations of the disease, and might include serum therapy from immunized animals.
Prevention. For a country like the United States, now happily free from the lung plague infection, the important object is its permanent exclusion. For this the federal quarantine for three months now in force ought to be effective. The only question would be in the case of small importations of one or two animals, which might introduce infection under an apparently prolonged incubation, or with a chronic type of the disease. Small importations of one or two, might be dismissed at the end of three months quarantine under a ticket of leave system, under which they and the herd into which they are taken can be kept track of for three months more. In the larger imported herds the possibility of the escape of infection under a three months quarantine is so infinitesimal that it may be practically ignored.
Similar precautions must be taken against the importation of cattle from a country reputed to be free from the lung plague, but which imports cattle from an infected country without imposing the three months’ quarantine.
The use, for transportation of cattle from one part of an immune country into another, of cars or boats which have been used for transporting cattle in an infected country can only be permitted after the vehicles in question have been thoroughly cleansed and disinfected and attested so by the official experts.
The landing in an uninfected country of hay, fodder, or cattle-food of any kind, or of litter, grain bags, head ropes, manure, or other article coming from an infected country must be prohibited until such article shall have been thoroughly disinfected.
Horns, hoofs, hides, hair and other products introduced into the country must be disinfected. The treatment adopted to exclude anthrax would be amply sufficient for lung plague.
Measures to Extirpate the Infection. Stop all accessions of possibly infected cattle from outside. Proclaim the infected area, prohibiting all entrance and egress of cattle, and all movement of cattle from herd to herd within the area, except under special license, based on the soundness of each herd for six months antecedent. Prohibit absolutely the pasturage of cattle on public highways and unfenced or insufficiently fenced places. Send to instant slaughter cattle found in such places in violation of this rule. Make an accurate census, with individual description of each bovine animal in the infected district, and make a necropsy of each such animal dying at the hands of the butcher or casually. Hold the owner guilty of a misdemeanor with heavy penalty, for every bovine animal that goes amissing in the infected district without official post mortem examination. When an infected animal is found in a herd have the whole herd, marked, appraised slaughtered under official supervision and with necropsy of each animal. If any herd has been losing animals, or had sick animals within a year, buy and kill the whole herd. Indemnify the owners to the amount of at least two thirds or three fourths of the sound market value for all except the advanced and acute cases of the disease, and such animals as have been moved into the State less than three months before. These latter may be sacrificed without indemnity. Disinfect thoroughly all infected premises and things at public expense. Close the fields against all outside cattle for three months. Burn all hay, straw, litter, and grain in the infected buildings or see that they be fed to horses, sheep or pigs apart from where cattle are kept. Burn or disinfect all manure or have it drawn out and plowed under by horses, and the wagons and implements used in doing so thoroughly disinfected. Allow restocking of the disinfected premises from sound districts only, and keep up the strictest supervision and control of the herds for from three to six months.
For private Control in the absence of Government Action. The stockowner in a secluded locality, not bordering on a highway or railway can as a rule secure the immunity of his herd by such measures as the following. Breed all the stock on the farm. If a change of blood is required buy the bull young and keep him strictly by himself for at least four months, allowing him to mingle with other cattle only after he has been thoroughly attested. Allow no animals to go outside for service or any other purpose and afterward return to the herd. Allow none to enter from without for any such purpose. If from any cause cattle must be bought, secure them from healthy herds and transport them in thoroughly disinfected cars, boats and by healthy roads, and never through an infected district. Place them in special premises at least one hundred paces from all other cattle, and under special attendants for three months.
Immunizing through a First Attack. When lung plague was at its worst in Great Britain, Mr. Harvey a dairyman on a large scale in Glasgow practiced the method of buying heifer calves and exposing them in his infected stables until they contracted the disease. He had a loss of 20 per cent. and the surviving 80 per cent. were then turned out on his farm and raised and when they came in milk, were sent into Glasgow as new milch cows immunized from the plague. He thus reduced his losses to the minimum of one fifth of the inexpensive calves, and warded off the heavy losses previously sustained in the valuable milch cows and preserved the still more valuable trade in the milk of healthy animals. The method was a mere temporary makeshift, depending for its success on the permanent maintenance of the lung plague, but so long as there were no well considered government measures for its extinction its permanence was assured in any case, and Mr. Harvey was working no injury to any one, while he was substituting a profitable occupation for a losing one, and supplying his customers with milk from sound cows in place of those that were continually coming down with the plague. Under official measures for the plague-extinction his attempt would have been most reprehensible, but in the absence of such measures it was highly meritorious.
Inoculation in the Tip of the Tail. This is an advance and in some respects an improvement on the Harvey system, as the infection and lesions are localized in the tail, and the mortality is reduced to 2 per cent. In practice a recently attacked animal is selected, and a portion of the lung which is strongly infiltrated but not yet hepatized. This is laid upon a clean scalded plate and incised with a clean scalded knife when an abundance of a clear yellow serum drains out. This is drawn up into a sterilized hypodermic syringe, and the tails having been washed and sterilized, the nozzle is inserted under the skin of each in succession and a drop or two of the liquid discharged subcutem. If despatch is important the washing may be dispensed with and the nozzle wiped and dipped in strong carbolic acid between each two successive insertions.