J60 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



liquids have a devouring hunger. If, there- 

 fore, the keeper who looks after them unhap- 

 pily forgets that the principal lesions or sores 

 are seated in the stomach and intestines, and 

 if he gives them too much solid nutriment, he 

 impedes the cure, irritates the ulcerations not 

 yet. thoroughly covered over, and soon adds 

 another victim to those which had already 

 died. 



This convalescence lasts from fifteen to 

 twenty days, and the animal only recovers its 

 health at last by slow degrees. Still the 

 careful keeper need not be afraid of a relapse 

 when he is patient and watchful. 



Such, then, is the contagious typhus of the 

 ox. Type of the unreturnable infectious diseases, 

 its virulent miasms undergo within the struc- 

 ture a series of transformations : they produce 

 in the frame a general disorder fully capable of 

 annihilating the predisposition or aptitude of 

 the animal to receive the taint. A disease 

 essentially specific, it aifects the principal 

 centres of life ; it kills its victim both by its 

 deadly virus and by the local derangements- 

 to which it gives rise ; for how is it possible 

 to preserve life when the whole nervous sys- 



