STATISTICAL AND HISTORICAL UEL OKT OF SPLENIC FEVER. K)5 



cows in the pasture of Mr. Moul was taken sick, and died on the 13th. On the 14th, a 

 second cow was attacked, and died on the following day. A third cow sickened on the 

 18th, and died the same day. No examinations were made. The two cows of the original 

 herd were buried in a pasture in which were two pairs of oxen and two heifers. In about 

 two weeks one of the oxen became sick, but recovered ; another ox was found dead in the 

 pasture, and subsequently both of the heifers. A post mortem examination revealed large 

 livers and spleens, and engorged and softened kidneys. These symptoms suggest splenic 

 fever; but is it positively ascertained that one of the cows placed in Mr. Moul s pasture 

 was not a Texan? The forty-four cows of the two car-loads have been traced to different 

 points: seventeen to Hambden, Lake County, Ohio, eleven to Huntington, Lorain County, 

 nine to Clarksfield, two to Wakeman. three to Plymouth, and one of the two others came 

 from Kentucky. It is but just to say that Dr. K. V. K. Montfort, who reports the case, 

 thinks, from conversations with dealers who saw the cattle, that there were no Texans 

 among them. Yet no positive evidence to that effect has been presented; and a shadow 

 of doubt must continue to rest upon the case, while it is undeniable that thousands upon 

 thousands of exposures of cattle to sick natives have been attended with perfect immunity 

 from disease in many latitudes and through many years. 



New Jersey. A large number of Texas and Indiana cattle were brought into the 

 cattle-yards and abattoirs of Hudson County in August, sick with Spanish fever. The 

 State agricultural society forbade any more being brought into the State ; and those sick 

 were quarantined, and, after a thorough examination, were put into rendering vats, and 

 the yards and pens disinfected with carbolic acid. No disease appeared afterward. 

 Three inspectors were appointed by the State Society, who quarantined all the suspected 

 cattle on arrival. 



August 9, one hundred and forty-one of Mr. Alexander s cattle, sent from Homer, 

 Illinois, on the last day of July, were sacrificed at the rendering tanks to avoid all risk 

 of public injury by the sale of the flesh. Post mortem examinations proved the existence 

 of the disease in many of them. 



An arrival of about seventy infected cattle, a portion of the Campville lot, at the Bergen 

 yards, Hudson City, was reported to Governor Ward on the 10th of August, and on the 

 following day the sanitary commissioner, Dr. Stephen Smith, found fifteen animals in a 

 dying condition. These animals were a part of the lot of eighty-four which were shipped, 

 August 4, reported in the letter of James Park, (quoted in a note on page 192,) from West 

 Lebanon Station, Indiana, and were a part of the drove of nine hundred and thirty 

 starting, April 27, from Colorado County, Texas, and driven six hundred miles to the 

 mouth of Red River, reaching that point May 31, for shipment up the Mississippi by 

 steamboat. 



Pennsylvania. A lot of western cattle were driven through Westmoreland County, 

 stopping over night on a farm three miles south of Greensburg. Some eight or ten head 

 took sick during the night and were left with the farmer to be killed. The symptoms 

 were said to be those of splenic fever. 



Georgia. A disease supposed to be the splenic fever prevailed in several counties ; 

 among them are named Chattooga, Hall, and Pulaski. 



