SIR W. J., COLLINS (St. Pancras, W.)To ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether, in the case of each of the following diseases, the diagnosis rests upon the isolation and identification of a specific microbe or upon the naked-eye appearances of the disease: foot-and-mouth disease, cattle plague, pleuro-pneumonia, and sheep-pox.
(Answered by Sir Edward Strachey.) The diagnosis of the diseases to which my hon. friend refers never rests on the naked-eye appearances of the disease alone, but it may rest on these appearances combined with evidence of their contagious nature. In the absence of the conditions for observing in the field whether the trouble is of a contagious nature or not, the diagnosis rests on the isolation not necessarily of a specific microbe but of a specific virus.