Report on Steppe Murrain or Rinderp)est. 251 



the edge of the arytaenoid cartilages. No ulceration, however, has 

 been seen by us throughout the whole extent of the windpipe 

 and bronchial tubes ; but thin layers of effused lymph lying in 

 close contact with the mucous are almost invariably present. 

 The lungs are healthy, of a normal colour, and often remarkably- 

 free from congestion. Their serous membrane is also unaffected. 

 The heart is healthy, occasionally rather flaccid, and without 

 blood in its cavities. The blood in all the vessels is fluid, evi- 

 dently from loss of its fibrine. It is also darker in colour than 

 ordinary venous blood. The brain and spinal marrow give no 

 evidence of structural change; but an increased quantity of fluid 

 is often found in the ventricles of the brain, and especially in the 

 upper part of the theca vei-tehralis. The flesh is firm, of a good 

 colour, and has but little tendency to pass quickly into decom- 

 position ; indeed we have not unfrequently seen it in a state 

 fitted for food. 



Pathology. — It is difficult to speak with certainty of the true 

 nature of the rinderpest, but it is evident that the morbific 

 matter on which it depends, having entered the system through 

 the medium of the organs of respiration, soon acts upon the 

 blood, by converting some of the constituents of that fluid into 

 its own elements ; and that, while this process is going on, the 

 animal gives no recognisable indications of being the subject of 

 the malady. This period constitutes the incubative stage of the 

 disease. The blood, having thus become contaminated, its 

 vitality impaired, and the poison augmented a thousand-fold 

 within the organism, the brain and nervous systems, as the 

 centres of sensation and motion, have their normal functions 

 necessarily and quickly interfered with, and hence one of the 

 earliest indications of the disease is a spasmodic twitching of the 

 voluntary and other muscles of the body. 



The malady has now arrived at a stage when nature makes a 

 bold effort to rid the system of the poison, and in doing this 

 the force of the morbific matter, so to speak, falls with more or 

 less severity upon the mucous membranes throughout the entire 

 body. Effusions of lymph — the fibrine of the blood — take place 

 into the follicles of the mucous membranes, as an effect perhaps in 

 part of the overtaxing of these grand excretory organs, and partly 

 because the fibrine itself is charged with the materies morbi, and 

 has probably also lost some portion of its vitality, which renders 

 it unfitted to remain in the vessels. Dark-coloured blood, which 

 remains fluid even after death from its defibrination, now flows 

 in the vessels ; and dysenteric purging also sets in, under which, 

 as a rule, the animal quickly sinks. 



If, on the contrary, the vis vitce should be sufficiently powerful 

 to withstand so great an exhausting process, then the poison 



