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Various diseases—In Park county, Colorado, a disease known there as 
“swelled brisket’ has occasioned twenty to thirty deaths. . 
In Barton county, Georgia, and Jackson and Emmet counties, Iowa, losses 
from “biack leg” are common. 
Bloody murrain is prevalent in Harford county, Maryland, where fifteen cases 
and eleven deaths have occurred; in Gloucester county, Virginia; and in Cla 
county, Alabama. In Gloucester county, Virginia, it is stated that “four-fifths 
of those attacked die,” and that “the loss is about ten per cent., one year with 
another.’ The estimate of loss is scarcely credible, if it is meant that a tenth of 
all the cattle of the county die annually from this cause. 
In many places diseases are spoken of under the vague terms “murrain” and 
“distemper.” In many cases reported, particularly in the south, these words are 
common. “Murrain” is prevalent in Barton county, Georgia; in Stokes and 
Lincoln counties, North Carolina. In Towns county, Georgia, “cattle pastured 
with cattle from the south take the murrain and invariably die, though those 
brought from the south do well,” (indicating the identity in this case of “ mur- 
rain” and Spanish fever.) In Caldwell county, North Carolina, “a disease 
among cattle known as ‘distemper’ proves fatal in nearly all cases,” while in 
some cases the words “murrain or distemper” are used. 
In Tippah county, Mississippi, the “dry murrain” prevails every autumn to 
some extent. 
A correspondent in York county, Virginia, says that “cattle brought into the 
tide-water region of the southern States are subject to bilious dysentery, which 
proves fatal in most cases.” 
A correspondent in Buchanan county, Iowa, says: “A disease has prevailed 
among cattle in the southern part of this county during the latter part of the 
winter and this spring. The animal is taken with weakness in the fore legs, 
heaviness of the eyes, which are much sunken, then a gurgling sound in the 
windpipe and discharges at the nose, gradually declining until death. ‘Tar has 
been used as aremedy. About three per cent. have died in that vicinity. The 
cattle in other parts of the county have not been affected.” 
Dr. G. M. Brown writes of a disease among cattle in Cumberland county, 
Virginia, which has prevailed at times for twenty years past, under the names, 
“Carolina distemper,” “cattle plague,” and “bloody murrain.” He is inclined 
to consider it identical with rinderpest, but, from the description he gives, it is 
evidently not the cattle plague of Europe, which has never prevailed in this 
country. When it does appear, it will not be twenty years in making itself 
generally known. He says of it: 
«The disease is attended with a great degree of fever, as shown in the case of 
milch cows by the cow suddenly ceasing to give milk, though the day before 
suckling her calf and giving the full quantity of milk. Sucking calves have es- 
eaped when the mother would die. The bowels at first are said to be constipated, 
and no cases have been said to be attended with diarrhoea or discharges of blood 
from the bowels; I presume because the disease has been so speedily fatal. The 
muscular twitchings and throbbing of the arteries (as I suppose) about the neck 
and head have been noticed; whether there has been any eruption on the sur- 
face, or the mucous membrane of the mouth or nose, has not been detected, or 
examined for, I apprehend, but the eyes are always affected—red and mattering. 
In the few cases that have been very imperfectly examined, after death, the con- 
tents of the stomach are described to be as dry as a chip, and the kidneys chiefly 
diseased. There is no doubt in my mind that this disease is similar to the rind- 
erpest of Europe, if not identical with it, having the same symptoms of a malig- 
nant, contagious fever, of a typhoid character, and closely resembling the disease 
of the human system known under various names, as typhus, typhoid, and ner- 
vous fevers. Medical treatment appears to have been of little benefit ; only in four 
or five cases ‘as far as I have had opportunity to inquire) have recoveries occurred, 
