85 



Zbc Storv? of BirDs^HJeatb. 



By W, Geo. Creswei,!,, M.D., L.R.C.P., F.Z.S., etc. 

 (Continued from page 59. J 



THE various members of the order Psittaci (and 

 especially the African forms as circumstances 

 present them to us) are among the birds most 

 susceptible to Septicaemia, if indeed they are 

 not the most susceptible. And just as we have seen 

 in other birds, they exhibit the disease in progressive 

 stages. This might be considered a superfluous remark 

 on my part but for the fact that, owing to the import- 

 ance attaching to these birds on account of their size 

 and beauty, their heavy price, and their high mortality 

 during and after importation, the earlier and later 

 stages have come to be seriously regarded as two 

 different diseases. This has to be sure more casually 

 occurred in the case of our Canaries and other birds, 

 where the initial stages are often thought to be simple 

 enteritis and the final ones invariably tuberculosis : 

 but the exceptional circumstances attending the 

 Parrots have led more than one writer to specially 

 designate the early stage by the names of Ship Fever 

 and Psittacosis — neither term by the way being par- 

 ticularly happy. Neither of them is at all scientific ; 

 in other words they give no clue to the real nature of 

 the disease. Septicaemia does not depend on the fact 

 of the sufierer being merely on shipboard ; and the 

 word Psittacosis conveys nothing more to the mind 

 than that either the Parrot itself is the disease (a 

 parallel being found in the term Pediculosis), or else 

 that a Parrot has a disease. It is intensely loose and 

 misleading, and might with equal philological in- 

 accuracy be imitated by " Leporosis " or " Fringillosis" 

 in the case of either a rabbit or a finch being affected 

 with either Septicaemia or any other disease. 



In a previous chapter allusion has been made to 



