STATISTICAL AND HISTORICAL REPORT OF SPLENIC FEVER, 193 



The first arrival of southern cattle in Jasper County was between the 25th of May and 

 the 1st of June, and six thousand eight hundred were received during the season, coming from 

 the Red River country up the Mississippi via Cairo, Illinois. About forty -two days elapsed 

 from their introduction to the outbreak among the native stock, of which four hundred 

 died, or ninety-nine per cent, of the whole number attacked. The disease was only com 

 municated to animals fed on pastures soiled by the excrements of the southern cattle, and 

 no case occurred of the infection of one native animal by another. In one instance, in 

 June, a small drove of Texan cattle was driven across the grazing ground of a native herd ; 

 the drovers pushed them across as fast as practicable, not allowing them to stop. In six 

 weeks the native cattle in that range were taken sick, and several died. About six 

 hundred head of cattle, which had wintered in the Louisiana marshes, passed through 

 Jasper County about the 25th of May. They were very thin, and about thirty died on the 

 road. The disease broke out among the native cattle in from seven to eight weeks, and 

 fifty head died, being nine-tenths of the whole number attacked. 



About eight hundred head of Texan and Cherokee cattle were herded in the adjoining 

 county, and four hundred natives died from coming in contact with them or their trail, and 

 the citizens of Jasper County would not permit them to enter that county unless the owners 

 deposited money to make all damages good. The loss was heaviest among the milch cows. 



On the 20th of July a lot of four hundred Texan cattle were purchased in Chicago 

 and driven through Lake County, stopping over night in the prairie west of town, all in 

 apparently good health. All the native cattle which fed upon or ran over that prairie 

 were attacked in about twenty-eight days, and sixty died ; only four or five recovering. 

 No other southern cattle passed through the county, and no other outbreak occurred. 



In Marion County about one hundred died of splenic fever ; and some losses occurred 

 in Hendricks, Lawrence. Newton, and White. Our correspondent in Benton reports the 

 loss of four hundred to six hundred head, and makes a statement which conflicts with the 

 uniform testimony from other sections, and which therefore should be taken with allowance 

 for a possible misapprehension of the facts, so far as it favors the idea that the infection 

 can be carried by the wind. It is as follows : &quot;In a neighboring county a herd of Texas 

 cattle were driven about eight miles along a road, and, the wind being from the south, 

 cattle along on the north side of the road took the disease, without either being driven 

 along the road traveled by the Texas cattle, or drinking water that had been exposed in 

 any manner. These facts induce the belief that the disease was communicated by the 

 wind/ Joseph Poole, of Attica, Indiana, reports the case of a cow which took the disease 

 in fifty-one days after Texas cattle had passed by the inclosure, which was separated from 

 them by a board fence. Another cow in the same inclosure was not infected. It is not 

 impossible that contact was effected through openings in the fence; otherwise infection 

 must have been carried in the air, as the animal was at no time outside of the inclosure. 

 He gives another instance, occurring five miles from the depot, forty-seven days after 

 exposure to Texas cattle passing along the road, a fence separating the native cow from the 

 traveling herd. 



Ohio. Thousands of Texas cattle have been carried through this State in the cars, 

 usually after pasturage in States further west for a sufficient time to eliminate the infectious 

 matter from the system, and almost invariably without reshipmcnt. Hence the disease is 

 little known in this State. 

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