CATTLE PLAGUE. 



139 



The question, what is the character of the 

 disease, has been one on which there has heen 

 great conflict of opinion. The French call it, 

 " Le typhus contagieux des betes d comes (the 

 contagious typhus of horned beasts) ; but the 

 Edinburgh committee of physicians and vete- 

 rinarians, after numerous dissections, declare 

 that it is not analogous to typhoid or typhus 

 fever, but resembles more an internal and ma- 

 lignant scarlatina. It affects chiefly the mucous 

 membranes, there being a general congestive 

 but non-inflammatory vascularity of these mem- 

 branes, especially in the alimentary tract, and 

 the disease is marked by a complete arrest of 

 the digestive functions, the stomach of the ani- 

 mal generally containing an enormous mass of 

 dry undigested food, often amounting to one or 

 two hundred pounds in weight, which acts as a 

 sponge to absorb new liquid food or medicine, 

 and resists its absorption into the system. The 

 disease is not, evidently, the pleuro-pneumonia 

 which excited so much alarm in this country a 

 few years ago, and which was suppressed in 

 Massachusetts by the relentless slaughter of all 

 the animals affected ; nor does it seem to bear 

 much analogy to the small-pox, with which it 

 has been confounded by some recent writers in 

 England. That it is the same disease which 

 committed the ravages which we have already 

 described, in England and on the Continent in 

 1745-'57, and 1768, will be evident from the 

 following descriptions, the first being from 

 Layard's Essay, " On the contagious Distemper 

 among the Horned Cattle," published in 1757 ; 

 the second from Professor Seifman, a Polish 

 Veterinarian, of the disease as it existed in that 

 country; and the third, the official description 

 of the disease at present raging in Great Britain, 

 drawn up for the orders in council by Professor 

 Simonds. Dr. Layard says : " The first appear- 

 ance of this infection is a decrease of appetite ; 

 a poking out of the neck, implying some diffi- 

 culty in deglutition ; a shaking of the head as 

 if the ears were tickled ; a hanging down of the 

 ears, a dulness of the eyes. After that, a stu- 

 pidity and unwillingness to move, great debil- 

 ity, total loss of appetite, a running at the eyes 

 and nose. ... A constant diarrhoea, roofs 

 of their mouths and barbs ulcerated. They 

 groan much, are worse in the evening, and 

 mostly lie down." 



Professor Seifman's description is: "The 

 beast eats little, stops its rumination, becomes 

 nervous; the mucous membranes, gum, mouth, 

 &c., throw out pimples ; there is a running at 

 the eyes and nose, and this running after a time 

 gives out an offensive smell; an offensive diar- 

 rhoea ensues, the beast coughs, becomes thinner, 

 sometimes grinds its teeth, lies down with its 

 head at one side, and dies without effort." 



Professor Simonds says : " The cattle show 

 great depression of the vital powers, frequent 

 shivering, staggering gait, cold extremities, 

 quick and short breathing, drooping head, red- 

 dened eyes, with a discharge from them, and 

 also from the nostrils, of a mucous nature, raw- 



looking places on the inner side of the lips and 

 roof of the mouth, diarrhoea or dysenteric 

 purging." 



Of these three descriptions, careful observers 

 say that Layard's best depicts the disease as it 

 now appears in Great Britain, except that there 

 is somewhat less of the outward eruptions now 

 than in his time. The pathological descriptions 

 derived from the dissection of the victims to 

 the disease in 1750, both in England and on the 

 continent, and those made during the existing 

 epidemic, are equally close in their resemblance 

 to each other, and demonstrate beyond the pos- 

 sibility of a doubt the identity of the two epi- 

 demics. That the disease is eminently con- 

 tagious and may be communicated through the 

 clothing of a herd-keeper, the litter, or even 

 the wood of the stall, or from the transmission 

 upon the horns or hoofs of a sound animal who 

 had been with diseased cattle, is fully demon- 

 strated. The wind, the highways over which 

 an infected herd has passed, and even still 

 waters and running streams, also serve to prop- 

 agate the contagion. Its ravages have been 

 hitherto confined to neat cattle, but it is a pe- 

 culiarity of the present epidemic that sheep are 

 also affected, and not as heretofore mere car- 

 riers of the infection, themselves insusceptible 

 to the virus. 



This contagiousness of the disease suggested 

 long since that there might be advantage in 

 inoculation. The experiment was tried exten- 

 sively in England, but without any good result. 

 The inoculated animals had the disease as se- 

 verely, and after the same period of incubation 

 (from five to nine days), as those who were in- 

 fected by their contact with diseased animals. 

 In Eussia, however, experiments which have 

 been made on the herds in the steppes have 

 proved more successful. These experiments, 

 which have been conducted for the last fifteen 

 years by eminent veterinary surgeons, have 

 been reported by Professor Jessen, of Dorpat, 

 Haller, Vicq d'Azyr, Abelgaard, Adami, Vi- 

 borg, and Kausch, and serve to settle some 

 points of interest. One of these is that, as in 

 the case of the vaccine disease, the intensity 

 of action of the inoculating virus decreases, 

 according as it passes throught a succession of 

 beasts, or, as it is technically termed, through 

 successive generations. Thus, at the Veteri- 

 nary School at Charkow fifty per cent., or the 

 normal number, of steppe oxen died at the first 

 inoculation; but after the inoculating matter 

 had passed through six cows, the seventh gen- 

 eration, or running from the nose of the sixth 

 inoculated cow, only produced one death in 

 thirteen cases. In 1853 upwards of a thousand 

 beasts were inoculated with matter of the 

 seventh generation, and not more than sixty 

 died. In 1854 it was determined to inoculate 

 oxen in the steppes themselves, and a large 

 number were so treated, with the astonishing 

 success that not a single animal died. This was 

 a peculiarly favorable year ; but, notwithstand- 

 ing the exceptional character of the result, it 





