Science: Good-by Abortion

The bellows of slaughtered cows have almost ceased in North Carolina, and Tarheel dairymen have turned their curses elsewhere. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced last week that North Carolina is the first State to conquer dread Bang’s disease, contagious abortion of cows, which has cost U.S. cattle and dairy industries some $50,000,000 a year in aborted calves and milk losses.

The campaign took eight years and the cost was high: 20,000 North Carolina cows slaughtered, $523,000 paid in indemnities to their owners. But most dairymen agree that it was worth it. For human beings contract Bang’s disease by drinking the milk of infected cows or goats. In human beings the disease is called undulant fever (brucellosis); it is seldom fatal but highly uncomfortable. The symptoms sometimes resemble tuberculosis’, malaria’s, sometimes typhoid’s.