been $20.45. The total payments for tuberculous cattle to date amount to $57,191.16 for 2,510 animals. Since the beginning of the present fiscal year 671 cattle have been appraised at $13,714.66, being an average of $20.45 per head as against $22.78 per head for all of the cattle that have been appraised since the beginning of operations, and $24.42 per head as the average for last year.

It is pleasant to be able to report that there is now a general appreciation of the fact that the State Live Stock Sanitary Board is organized and is working for the suppression of diseases that cause great and burdensome losses every year and that its function is to check these losses and assist those who are suffering them. It is recognized by the Board that there are large commercial interests at stake, and that this work should be so arranged and conducted as to interfere as little as possible with the routine of the business of the farmer, and that it should be so managed as to increase confidence in animal products and have a tendency to enlarge the market for them. At the same time, it is believed that the work is without justification unless it has a permanent sanitary value and succeeds in protecting the public and the general live stock interests as well as the individual. This community of interests, this plurality of objects to be achieved and of obstacles to be avoided, has given us a problem that has taxed the knowledge and ingenuity of numerous officials and boards in this and other countries.

Whatever objections have been raised in other states to work looking toward the suppression of tuberculosis of cattle, they are not based on a desire that the disease shall not be suppressed, but upon the methods employed and expense involved. Some of the methods in use elsewhere have placed such burdensome restrictions upon dairy farmers that the measures have become exceedingly obnoxious to them, and in order to obtain a modification of methods they have in some cases objected to the execution of all plans carried out for the purpose of suppressing tuberculosis. This has caused a false impression and in some places led to the belief that farmers are opposed to the whole work of suppressing tuberculosis, but in Pennsylvania this is not the case. The farmers here want healthy herds.

The plan of voluntary inspections that has been adopted has made it impossible for anyone to object to an inspection of his cattle. The question might be raised as to this plan that it does not sufficiently insure the inspection of herds that are notoriously diseased and are supplying milk for the public market and distributing tuberculous animals which carry the disease into other herds. But the answer to this objection is that consumers, dealers and creameries do not knowingly purchase the product of tuberculous cattle. As soon as it is known that a given herd is tuberculous, the market for its product becomes restricted to such an ex

tent that it is to the business advantage of its owner to apply for a test of his herd and remove the tuberculous animals. Moreover, public sentiment, and the influence of his neighbors will often lead to an application for inspection where tuberculosis is known to exist; but the usual impelling motive is the desire upon the part of the owner of the cattle to avoid a source of danger and of loss.

In my last report I advised the continuance of the present plan of dealing with tuberculosis and in view of the enlarged demand from live stock owners for assistance under this plan and the success that has rewarded our operations under it, I am of the opinion that its general principles should not be changed.

There is, however, an important matter that I should like to present for consideration with a suggestion as to an extension of the present work. Herd owners for whom inspections are made, sign an application in which they agree to thereafter observe the precautions and precautions and measures advised by the State Live Stock Sanitary Board for the prevention of the reintroduction of tuberculosis into their herds. Among such precautions is one in relation to cattle purchased for addition to the inspected herds. Owners of such herds are advised to buy cattle only subject to the tuberculin test or from herds that they have good reason to believe are free from tuberculosis. But many dairymen have difficulty in purchasing according to these provisions. They are to buy cattle that are gathered from unknown sources by drovers, shipped long distances, and disposed of at public sales in dairy districts. The seller offers no guarantee as to the freedom of such animals from tuberculosis, and it is known from repeated observation that many of them are so afflicted. The new law and regulations (act of May 27, 1897) will provide that cattle coming from out of the State, when thus sold, shall be tested and the buyer will have a guarantee as to their condition. But cattle carried from one part of the State to another will still convey disease in many cases. This danger is increased by the fact that some unscrupulous persons knowingly dispose of tuberculous cattle through the channels of trade, under the impression that it is cheaper to do so than to report the disease to the State authorities.

Some dealers have already arranged to sell cattle subject to the tuberculin test and in some cases, also, whole herds are inspected and sold with certificates showing that they are healthy. This system is desirable for the purchaser and it has been observed that cattle sell better with a guarantee of this kind than without it. Many of the leading breeders of the State sell cattle for breeding purposes only under these conditions. It is desirable that this system should be extended as much as possible, because when herds become tuberculous it is usually because the disease has been purchased in the body of a cow or bull.

The principal objection, that has been raised, to the more general practice of testing cattle with tuberculin before they are sold is on the ground of expense. It is held that such inspections will increase the price of cattle. While this effect would be a desirable one from the standpoint of the breeder or dealer, if the cost of inspection were not equivalent to the increase in price, it would be injurious to the dairymen in the eastern part of the State who buy most of their cows. It is a fact, however, that in New England, and especially in Massachusetts, where such inspections have been practiced on the largest scale and for the longest time, the price of cattle has not been noticeably increased. Even if there were a slight increase in price, is not the additional security worth an advance of one per cent. on the cost of the cow? However, to do away with this objection, I believe that it would pay, under certain restrictions and conditions, to make inspections of cattle belonging to dealers, upon application from them and without cost to them. The animals found to be free from disease could then be sold with a guarantee as to their condition and owners of sound herds could buy without danger of infecting them. Those that proved to be tuberculous could be disposed of as other tuberculous cattle are disposed of now-by appraisement and destruction. Such action would prevent the spread of much disease.

In reference to other diseases, I would say that my services have been demanded in connection with the following affections, Texas fever, glanders, rabies, hog cholera, osteoporosis, tuberculosis, infectious abortion, black leg, anthrax, fowl cholera, periodic-ophthalmia, red water, strangles, distemper of dogs, garget, influenza and many other diseases that do not properly come within the sphere of public action, because not transmissible. These diseases have involved all species of domestic animals and all parts of the State.

Information and advice have been furnished in letters to more than five thousand correspondents and numerous personal visits and inspections have been made for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of live stock.

The Bacteriologist, Dr. M. P. Ravenel, has been engaged in making mallein, tuberculin and anthrax vaccine, in examining numerous specimens from animals suffering with various diseases that were sent in for identification from all sections of the State, and in conducting much of the original work of the Board.

A special report on tuberculosis is now in preparation, which it is hoped to publish as a bulletin later in the year. Articles on abortion of cattle and on hog cholera are to be found among the papers in another part of this volume, and I attach hereto some facts of current interest regarding some of the diseases that have received special attention during the past year

RABIES.

In my last annual report I devoted considerable space to a discussion of this affection on account of the great prevalence of the disease during last year and the misunderstanding that so generally exists in reference to it. During the present year, a large number of reports of rabies have been received and considerable work has fallen upon the State Live Stock Sanitary Board in connection with this disease. There are still a few people who profess to believe that there is no such disease as rabies, or hydrophobia, and lengthy articles have been written and published widely in which it is claimed that all so-called cases of rabies are either myths or some other disease, the nature of which has not been recognized. Such articles and statements have done a great deal of harm, because they render it difficult to carry out the measures that it is necessary to enforce in order to suppress this dreadful malady. It is sufficiently easy to disprove such allegations if their authors are known and will consent to consider the scientific facts that have been demonstrated in connection with this question. But many of these statements are published anonymously, and while they contain no scientific facts to substantiate them they nevertheless tend to unsettle public opinion, with the result above mentioned.

Has it ever occurred to those who really profess to believe that there is no such disease as rabies that the history of this affection dates from the earliest medical literature? It is, in fact, one of the oldest diseases of which there is an authentic record and was described by Aristotle about 400 B. C., who stated, "The dogs suffered from rabies. This throws them into a condition of fury and all animals which they then bite develop rabies."

This disease in man has also been described by the earliest of the ancient physicians and reports of outbreaks occur repeatedly in medical literature from that time to the present. Eminent scientists, and Government commissions without number, have studied rabies and have, in all cases, arrived at the conclusion that it is an extremely dangerous malady, transmitted by the bite of an animal afflicted with it. Contrary views are held by a few individuals who have not had the facilities, inclination or skill necessary to enable them to study this disease scientifically and experimentally.

One of the principal advocates of the view that rabies does not exist bases his opinion largely upon the results of some investigations made by him of newspaper reports of this disease, and he has found that in many instances where it was claimed that dogs were mad no evil results followed their bites, and some people who were claimed to have rabies were, he states, actually suffering from some other disease. It is undeniably true that a great many of the public reports of rabies are wrong and based upon a misinterpretation or exaggeration of certain comparatively harmless conditions in dogs, but it is also undeniably

true that many other diseases have been wrongly diagnosed. Because a certain horse suffering with a discharge from the nose is not afflicted with glanders, it is no indication that glanders does not exist and that another horse suffering with a discharge from the nose may not have this deadly disease. Any one, no matter how prejudiced he may be, who will honestly study the real facts, will be convinced that there is a widespread and altogether too common disease of dogs that is generally characterized by a tendency to roam, by a marked alteration of temperament and voice, frequently by a furious and uncontrollable desire to bite, sometimes by paralysis of the jaw and throat and always terminating in death. A comparatively superficial study of the facts will also show that this disease can be conveyed to healthy animals by the bite of an animal suffering with it, and that the inoculation of animals with saliva or with portions of the brain or spinal cord, taken from the subjects of such disease, will reproduce it, that it can be transmitted indefinitely from animal to animal and that instead of losing strength and virulence by such transmission, it is usually rendered more malignant. It is utterly absurd and foolish to deny that such a disease exists, and if this disease is not rabies it remains for those who deny the existence of rabies to supply another name for it.

Reports on rabies occur in the official health publications of all the Governments of Europe, and the disease is recognized as an exceedingly dangerous one, to be combated most energetically. It was formerly supposed that rabies would develop spontaneously as the result of certain unfavorable conditions, such as confinement, thirst, nervous excitement, stimulant, diet, etc., but it is now demonstrated beyond question that such is not the case, and that the only cause of the disease is direct inoculation from a rabid animal, usually by biting.

On the 23d of March of this year, the British Board of Agriculture issued a far reaching order in reference to this disease, which was deemed necessary on account of the fact that rabies has been increasing for the last few years, and it was thought wise to make an energetic attempt to get rid of it. By this order it was provided that all dogs of Great Britain shall be muzzled, that all animals affected with or suspected of rabies shall be at once reported to the police authorities, and that such information shall be transmitted without delay to the Board of Agriculture. All dogs diseased or which had been bitten by a diseased or suspected dog, are killed. All strange dogs are seized and detained and the importation of dogs from foreign countries is prohibited, excepting when made in accordance with the most stringent provisions. As a result of these new regulations, rabies is rapidly becoming less prevalent, and it is hoped that the disease will be exterminated in England within a comparatively short time. Similar regulations have succeeded in practically eradicating rabies in Ger