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4
in anyway responsible until twenty-one days have elapsed from the
payment of the premium; and thus they avoid a very vast amount of
risk, for it is well known that animals recently brought into sheds
are more liable to suffer from the lung disease than those which have
been some time in the sheds.* It is clearly the interest of these companies
to charge as moderately as the risk will allow; and they have
no doubt adopted their standard as the result of large and carefully
considered experience.
With cattle as with man nothing tends so much to cheek the
spread of disease as a good supply of pure air. The disease which has
been most fatal to cows for some fifteen years past is pleuro-pneumonia,
generally known as the lung disease, a disease believed to be
contagious, now prevalent in Mecklenburg and Holstein, quite
distinct from the steppe murrain which prevails in the South of
Russia. The general impression in the trade appears to be that this
lung disease is now nearly the only fatal disease to which cows are
liable. There is, however, great ignorance on the subject of cattle
diseases, and it is not at all unlikely that several diseases may be
grouped under the category of the lung disease, which is no doubt
the most common one.
The foot and tongue disease was formerly the prevalent epidemic
amongst cows; but of late years it has become quite rare. The
mange, a contagious disease answering to itch in man, is occasionally
found amongst the London cows. Diseases of the udder are not
infrequent.
The health of the public is intimately associated with that of
the cattle in several ways. In the first place, the milk of diseased
animals is unwholesome, and the effect upon infants who are often
solely dependent on this for nourishment cannot fail to be most
injurious. Some persons, indeed, have stated that diseased cows do
not yield milk; this I know to be incorrect, for I have seen a cow in
an advanced stage of disease yielding milk. In one instance, I
examined a specimen of milk from such a cow; under what disease
this was labouring I could not ascertain. I found the milk to be
rather pale and watery in appearance; but it yielded an unusual
quantity of pale colored cream, and the reaction was abnormally
alkaline. No doubt in acute diseases the milk generally fails; but so
completely do many London dairymen regard Cows as their machines
to supply milk that they seldom notice other symptoms until the milk
fails. I do not, however, think from what I have been able to learn
that there is much milk sold in this parish from cows actually
* One dairyman informs me, that in one place in this parish his cows seldom remained
in the shed above two months without having the disease. If they passed this period
they seldom became ill.