92 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



2. Symptoms. 



3. Post-mortem appearances. 



4. Causes and nature of the disease. 



5. Curative treatment. 



6. Preventiou. 



DEFINITION. 



The splenic or periodic fever, commonly known as Texas fever, Span- 

 ish fever, or cattle fever, and which has been observed wherever and 

 whenever cattle from the States or the Gulf of Mexico have been. driven 

 north during- the summer months, is a disease peculiar to the ox tribe, 

 which has never been described ijs attacking the southern cattle, and 

 which occurs, in a more or less latent form, among them. Its distinguish- 

 ing features have been most marked in the cattle of Georgia, Tennessee, 

 Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, and Indiana, wherever 

 these have grazed on i)astures j^reviously or simultaneously occupied by 

 herds from Texas and Florida. It is, so far as we have yet ascertained, 

 incapable of communication hy simple contact of sick and of healthy 

 animals ; and, iu the strict sense of the terms, is neither contagious nor 

 infectious. It is an enzootic disorder, i)robably due to the food on which 

 southern cattle subsist, whereby the systems of these animals become 

 charged Avith deleterious principles, that are afterwards propagated and 

 dispersed by the excreta of apparently healthy, as well as obviously sick, 

 stock. It is not one of the epizootics proper, and in its origin and distribu- 

 tion differs from the plagues due to specific animal poisons which are 

 common in various parts of the Old World and the New. The malady is 

 probably incapable of communication by inoculation, and the flesh, blood, 

 and secretions of such cattle have been handled and consumed by human 

 beings without the manifestation of untoward results. 



In Texas, cattle of all ages, from the time they begin to graze, are 

 afflicted with the malady in a somewhat latent and mild form. Early in 

 the year many animals die, especially when the wet deteriorates the 

 grasses ; and the mortality, of which any one can gain evidence in crossing 

 Texan prairies and seeing the carcasses, is ascribed to poverty. It is, 

 however, a feature everywhere that cattle do not attain the same weight 

 in the south, even on the best grasses, that they do in northern latitudes ; 

 and this is, no doubt, accounted for by the uniform signs of irritation, 

 and even erosions of the stomach, enlarged spleen, fatty liver, and some- 

 times ecchymosis in the kidneys. 



The disease in its acute form is characterized during life by a long and 

 variable period of incubation, which is most commonly of five or six 

 weeks' duration. Th(^ temi)erature of tlie body then rises, the secretions 

 are ch('<;ked, and indications of depression and listlessness are afforded 

 by droojiing head, depressed ears, arched back, approximation of limbs, 

 and indisposition to move, or to rise when down. The freces, usually dry, 

 are sometimes blood-stained ; and the urine almost invariably becomes 



