Report on Steppe Murrain or Rinderpest. 201 



popularly as " the mouth and foot disease." It has continued 

 from that time to the present, not proving on the whole a 

 destructive disease to life, but at irregular intervals assuming a 

 more severe form than ordinary, more particularly in 1845 and 

 1852, and leading on these occasions to a great deterioration in 

 the value of the animals affected. 



Shortly after the appearance of eczema, namely, in 1841, pleuro- 

 pneumonia broke out among the cattle, and it, too, has remained 

 down to the present time. It is worthy of a passing remark that 

 neither of these were imported diseases. It was not until several 

 months after pleuro-pneumonia had established itself in the 

 country that an alteration took place in the tariff by which live 

 stock came in free of duty, and up to that time the high rate of 

 duty prevented any importations of foreign cattle or sheep being 

 made. This fact in itself is sufficient to prove that the malady 

 Avas not imported by foreign cattle ; besides which the parts 

 of the country where it was first observed could not possibly have 

 had any immediate or direct connexion with the ports. Pleuro- 

 pneumonia had no sooner gained a footing, than, iollowing the 

 laws of all epizootics, it quickly spread over a great extent of 

 country, and continued to devastate our herds with almost un- 

 mitigated severity for the first few years. It has since assumed 

 rather an enzootic form, and has prevailed mostly in those localities 

 and places where secondary causes are in full operation to pre- 

 dispose animals to its influence, — hence its continuance in the 

 ill-ventilated, over-crowded, and badly-drained cow-sheds of the 

 metropolis and other large towns, and on the " cold retentive 

 soils " and undrained farms in the country, especially such as 

 lie in exposed situations. 



Besides the special cause, or rather, perhaps, special com- 

 bination of causes, which give origin to the enzootic form 

 of pleuro-pneumonia, its appearance in a cattle-shed or on a 

 farm is frequently traceable to the introduction of newly-pur- 

 chased animals, who bring the disease in a latent state with 

 them ; and which, on its declaring itself, extends by ordinary 

 infection to those with whom they are located. Infection we 

 hold to be one of the chief causes of the continuance of pleuro- 

 pneumonia for so many years among us, as every diseased animal 

 by virtue of the exhalations given off from its body becomes a 

 focus of the malady, and a new source whence the poison, so to 

 s})eak, is disseminated.* The same fatality which marks the 



* It is with considerable hesitation that I record my dissent from the opinion of 

 so high an authority as Professor Simonds, but the question whether pleuro- 

 pneumonia be infectious or not, is so important, that I think it right to mention 

 that the experience of several successive years, and of a considerable number of 

 cases, makes it impossible for me to subscribe to the opinion that this disease is 



