804 THE VETERINAEY SCIENCE. 



CUNSUMPTION IN CATTLE (TUBERCULOSIS). 



This disease is a contagious one, caused by germs called the 

 bacillus tuberculosis. This disease has been known for centuries 

 back, and there has been laws passed calling for the destruction 

 of affected animals, and also forbidding the meat to be used as 

 food. This disease is known in all the civilized world. It may 

 affect the lungs, bowels, liver, kidneys, bladder, brain or spinal 

 cord, or any part of the body. The germs in the affected cattle 

 come away from the lungs by coughing, or flows away in the 

 saliva from the affected animal's mouth, they fall on the grass, in 

 mangers, pails and such like, and other animals following them 

 up may breathe the germs into the lungs by eating on drinking 

 out of the same pail or manger, or off the grass where the 

 diseased cattle have been, and this is how the disease is com- 

 municated from one to the other. These germs may also pass 

 out of the system into the milk, and animals or people that drink 

 this milk are liable to take the disease, so you see the danger of 

 having a diseased cow around. 



Symptoms. — At first the disease comes on very slowly after 

 it is taken into the system. If the disease affects the lungs there 

 is a short, dull cough which may be noticed more in the morning, 

 after exercise, or drinking, later on in the disease the cough be- 

 comes more troublesome, the animal runs down in condition, the 

 breath has a bad smell, there is a dribbling of saliva from the 

 mouth, the animal becomes hide bound, the hair stands out and it 

 is a pitiful looking sight, and in a few months pines away and 

 dies. The time it takes the disease to run its course varies from 

 three months to a year. This disease is noticed more in 

 thoroughbred cattle than it is in grade cattle. If it affects the 

 bowels the animal will run down in condition, will have diarrhoea 

 sometimes, then costiveness changing every few days ; the other 

 symptoms are the same only when the disease does not affect the 

 lungs the animal has not such a cough. If the disease affects the 

 brain or spinal cord it causes paralysis, and death soon follows. 

 If any of the other parts or organs of the body are affected it 

 causes symptoms peculiar to that organ when affected, and the 

 animal slowly pines away and dies. The way to test cattle to find 

 out whether they are affected with tuberculosis or not is to use the 

 test known as the tuberculine test, which is done by injecting 

 tuherculine into all the herd of cattle that are supposed to be 

 affected with the disease and having them starved for twenty-four 



