34 DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 



MEDICAL TREATMENT OF THE LUNG PLAGUE. 



A general and practical review of the means employed for the cure of the lung disease 

 results in the conviction that, as a means to be relied on for the protection of the farmer s 

 stock and the herds of a country, they are worse than useless ; and it is necessary to im 

 press this lesson on the public mind, as there are always those who base their futile efforts in 

 this respect on the declaration that all diseases are curable if we only know the means with 

 which to attack them and the best antidotes. When science has sufficiently advanced, it is 

 thought disease will lose all its power ; and, in accordance with extravagant views in this 

 direction, men and beasts ought to attain a state of immortality on earth. 



It is an undoubted fact that wherever rational preventive measures have been super 

 seded by the efforts even of the most skilled veterinary practitioners, the mortality by the 

 lung plague has always attained its highest point and continued without intermission. It 

 must be thus to the end of time. 



Nevertheless, circumstances arise when a certain relief may be afforded by remedial 

 agents. A valuable animal or highly prized herd, so isolated from other stock as to pre 

 vent contagion, may be subjected to rational medical treatment. A survey of the means 

 suggested in the past, of the principles which should guide us in the present state of knowl 

 edge, and of the details concerning my own practice, may, therefore, be considered impor 

 tant in this place. 



Bourgelat, in 1769, recommended abundant blood-letting the first, second, and third 

 day, (when the blood fails to coagulate it is a sign that this operation is useless,) emollient 

 injections, bland or soothing beverages, (breuvages adoucissants,) emollient masticatories, 

 and emollient fumigations of the nose. When the disease is far advanced blood-letting 

 must be avoided, and reliance placed in cinchona bark and purgative injections. Bourge 

 lat also prescribed small blood-lettings, low diet, emollient clysters, and fumigations of 

 acetic acid in the stables. 



There is little interesting on this subject up to the date of Delafond s work, 1844. He 

 opens his chapter on the curative treatment of acute pleuropneumonia as follows : &quot;Many 

 persons, and some veterinarians, have sought in the arsenal of pharmacology the specific 

 remedies for the cure of pleuropneumonia. I declare that for the cure of this disease there 

 exists no specific, but rather rational curative means based on the nature, seat, and stage 

 of the malady. The two great secrets, in my opinion, are, first, in recognizing pleuro 

 pneumonia at its commencement ; and, second, in adopting the means that I have to 

 describe.&quot; 



I cannot, with fairness, make a very brief summary of Delafond s recommendations, 

 and, in the main, shall give a translation of them. When pleuropneumonia, he says, 

 affects a herd of cattle, the first animal affected must be removed and placed in an isolated 

 spot, to be carefully examined during the entire progress of the case. Frequent examina 

 tions must be made of each animal in the herd. All that show a short, quick breathing, 

 numbering from twenty-five to thirty respirations per minute, and an accelerated pulse, 

 beating from sixty to sixty-five times per minute, in which the chest is evidently flattened 

 either on one side or the other, whose respiratory murmurs are loud and associated 

 with a friction sound, and which have their visible mucous membranes reddened, must be 

 regarded as subjects which, notwithstanding that they continue to eat and drink, ruminate, 



