108 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



festations. The spleen is enlarged ; the animals have, without exception, the &quot;ague cake &quot; 

 the stamp of a malarious district; the liver is fatty, and this is a lesion that might be 

 anticipated in so warm a country; the true stomach is reddened at its left end, the membrane 

 is eroded, or appears as if scratched with a sharp nail on its folds, and although there may 

 be only a single and small erosion, nevertheless the trace of gastric disorder is there. I 

 have not failed in a single instance in Texas to trace this, and I have opened as many as 

 twenty-six animals per day, weighing their organs carefully, and watching closely for these 

 signs. Sometimes the scars of old ulcers are more marked than the erosions on the mucous 

 folds, and it is not uncommon to find there traces of ancient lesions about the pylorus, or 

 intestinal opening. 



My observations extend further. From the earliest age that the calf feeds on grass, 

 to the oldest that a bullock attains, the morbid lesions alluded to arc found. They grow 

 better and worse, and, in dissecting a dozen animals, one or two will be found to have 

 blood extravasations, of a very limited and delicate character, in the pelvis of the kidney, 

 in the urinary bladder, and in the intestinal mucous membrane. During the summer, so 

 far as I can learn, more than at any other season, a few bullocks in a herd may be seen to 

 droop behind, and void bloody urine. Mr. Louis Brandt, now a practicing veterinarian 

 in New York, who lived twelve years in Texas, often witnessed these symptoms; and 

 persons engaged in shipping large quantities of cattle throughout the year have told me 

 that they have at times seen the symptoms. 



It is difficult to get at the truth; but from personal observation, and very careful and 

 numerous inquiries, I am in a position to state that almost if not quite universally, in the 

 States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, and for a distance of at least two or three hundred 

 miles inland, the cattle do not attain the full weight they can and do reach elsewhere ; 

 that they very commonly appear in blooming health, and are usually free from acute and 

 marked symptoms of any disease; that, nevertheless, these animals are usually more 

 anaemic and less firm than northern cattle, and that, without exception, all of them that I 

 have dissected have shown the spleen enlarged to twice or thrice its usual weight, the liver 

 slightly or very fatty, and the true stomach reddened and eroded. The removal of these 

 animals to a northern State results, especially as winter approaches, in a diminished size 

 of spleen, a great deposit of fat, and development of blood and muscle, and the cicatriza 

 tion of the gastric lesions. 



Side by side with observations made by me in Texas on the bodies of animals that 

 had died, and on others slaughtered in apparent health, must be placed Mr. Ravenel s 

 researches in relation to the cryptogamic origin of the disease. I do not wish to forestall 

 his observations, or the report of Doctors Billings and Curtis, but certainly it appeared that 

 the grasses which the animals ate had a healthy aspect, were not infected by parasitic 

 plants, and could not, on a casual observation, be recognized as presenting any peculiar 

 character that might account for the ill health of animals eating them. 



Conjecture is not always profitable, and as yet it is impossible to say more with cer 

 tainty than that, in a warm country, where a rich and retentive soil is ever charged with 

 considerable moisture, and where artificial systems of culture are in their infancy, a gen 

 eral low tone of system prevails, which manifests itself in the shape of an imperfect de 

 velopment of blood,- an enlargement of blood glands, and very significant lesions of the 

 stomach and liver. 



