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187
Victor'a House. Victoria Street,
Westminster,
December 9th, 1880.
J. E. Wakefield, Esq.,
Metropolitan Board of Works.
Sir,
I have submitted your letter of the 24th ult. to the Committes of this Association,
and am instructed to thank the Board for their communication, and to assure them
that the possibility of disease being communicated through glandered horses drinking
at the public cattle troughs is a subject which has never been lost sight of by them,
and that every precaution has always been taken to diminish the risk.
The accompanying Memorandum on the subject will show that the watchfulness
of the Association in this direction has been so successful that since the formation of
the Society in 1859, not a single complaint or intimation has been received of a horse
having contracted the disease at one of their troughs, although it is estimated that
not less than 200,000 horses are now drinking daily at them.
The whole matter was anxiously considered by the Association before they
originated these structures, and the experience of many years fully confirms the
opinion at which they then arrived, that the benefit and relief to be derived from
them would be incalculable, whilst with proper precaution the risk of spreading
disease would be very slight.
The Committee are, of course, fully aware that in an outbreak of disease, it is
natural that some suspicion should immediately attach to the troughs, but in view of
the facts enumerated in the accompanying Memorandum, they have no hesitation in
saying, that if the disease is spreading, the cause must be sought, elsewhere, and amy
probably be found in the deficient ventilation, and defective sanitary arrangements,
and overcrowding of many of our Metropolitan stables, resulting from too lax an
enforcement of the laws which so strictly prohibit the concealing, using, and selling