CONTAGlOLfS ANIMAL DISEASES. 



BY EZRA M. HUNT, M. J)., SC. D., TBENTON, N. J. 



Tbe relations of domestic auimals to the public health — to food and 

 milk supply — the comparative study of their diseases as thiowinj? light 

 on hu?nan ailments, and the immense financial and commercial import 

 of an3' serious diseases occurring to them, cannot but impress any one 

 who will give to the subject that consideration which its im])ortauce 

 demands. 



In 18G2 the medical officer of the privy council of Great Britain made 

 an important report on the diseases of live stock in their relations to 

 the public supplies of meat and milk. In that pa])er Prof. John (lara- 

 gee states the number of horned cattle in the United Kingdom at 

 7,040,998, and calculates the loss by deaths among tht^se auimals at 

 £0,000,000. The census of 1880 states the number of food animals in 

 the United States at 91,805,232. The chief epizootics named in the re- 

 port referred to are rinderpest, or typhoid or enteric fever of cattle, 

 which always spreads from the Russian steppes ; contagious pleuro- 

 pneumonia of cattle, a disease always extending from Central Europe, 

 though i)r()bably traceable to Asia and Africa, in some parts of which it 

 is a very common disease ; the epizootic aphtha^, murrain, or the foot- 

 and-mouth disease, and sheeppox. Of the enzootic diseases, which de-. 

 pend on local causes, and one parallel to endemics in man, anthrax or 

 carbuncular fever takes the lead. Of this there are so many varieties 

 of classification and description that we cannot yet be said to have a 

 settled nomenclature. Thus, splenic apoplexy, braxy in sheej), the 

 black-leg or quarter-ill of Britain, and other erysipelatous forms in the 

 sheep and pig, boils and carbuncles, parturition fevers, hog cholera, 

 Texas cattle fever, and some other ailments have been included in this 

 class. Add to these the parasitic diseases of animals, and we have a 

 score or more of diseases which are either deadly to the animals or in- 

 jurious to meat and milk as food products. Many of these are commu- 

 nicable, not only to different varieties of animals, but to human beings 

 as well. 



None of these diseases are claimed to have originated on American 

 soil, except it be the Southern cattle fever, whicli is regarded by many 

 as only a variety of anthrax. When we consider, too, that rinderpest, 

 pleuro-pneumonia, and foot-and-mouth disease were brought to (Ireat 

 Britain from the Continent, and that the ravages of these diseases have 

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