BLACK QUARTER AND RED-WATER 249 



Black Quarter, Quarter 111, or Joint Murrain, is an 



infectious disease due to a bacillus that morphologically 

 resembles that of a malignant cedema. Young cattle and 

 sheep are liable to the malady. Infection usually takes 

 place by inoculation through a wound on the skin, or 

 perhaps of the mucous membranes. Intense inflammatory 

 swelling, bloody oedema, and emphysema of the tissues result, 

 and a general condition of poisoning from the poisons (toxins) 

 produced at the local lesion. (See pages 383 and 671.) 



The symptoms are loss of appetite, lameness, a hot 

 swelling (usually in a hind quarter), which is at first painful, 

 but rapidly increasing becomes painless, cold, and crepitating 

 on being touched, owing to the presence of gas in the 

 tissues. 



Treatment is usually of little avail, but, if discovered in 

 the early stage, the swelling should be cut into and washed 

 with a strong antiseptic, as 5 per cent, solution of carbolic acid 

 in water. Old-fashioned graziers still introduce, with what is 

 widely reported to be satisfactory results, a seton, which is 

 kept open by a piece of twine drawn through it, in the 

 dewlap of their calves at six months old. The belief is that 

 the open wound secretes an antidote, which is absorbed into 

 the system of the young susceptible animal and acts as a 

 preventive of the disease. But inoculation with a Pasteur Co.'s 

 vaccine prepared for this specific disease is more scientific 

 and is now fairly reliable, a small percentage only dying of 

 the effects of the inoculation. 



Of the Red-water, Black-water, Blood-Murrain, or 

 Muir 111, which has not been generally associated with the red- 

 water of tick-infested countries, Professor Wm. Williams said : 



" I am induced to conclude that the disease originates 

 in an impoverished condition of the blood arising from want 

 of proper food, that the albumen of the blood is thus degraded 

 in quality, and as such is unfit to be appropriated for the 

 nourishment of the tissues, and is consequently excreted by 

 the kidneys and expelled from the body." 



It is more common in females than in males, and more 

 common in heifers than in cows; and it very frequently 

 attacks cattle turned into coppice woods or on to moorland, 

 coarse and marshy pastures, where the food is of inferior 

 quality. 



