SPLENIC OK PERIODIC FEVER OF CATTLE. 109 



der is there. I Lave not fiiiled in a single instance in Texas to trace 

 this, and I have opened as many as twenty-six animals per day, weigh- 

 ing their organs carefully, and watching closely for these sigas. Some^ 

 times the scars of old ulcers are more marked than the erosions on the 

 mucous folds, and it is not uncommon to find there tracer of ancient 

 lesions about the pylorus, or intestinal opening. 



My observations extend further. From the earliest age that the calf 

 feeds on grass, to the oldest that a bullock attains, the moibid lesions 

 alluded to are found. They grow better and worse, and, in dissecting 

 a dozen animals, one or two will be found to have blood extravasations, 

 of a very limited and delicate character, in the pelvis of the kidney, in 

 the urinary bladder, and in the intestinal mucous membrane. During 

 the summer, so far as I can learn, more than at any other season, a few 

 bullocks in a herd may be seen to droop behind, and void bloody urine. 

 Mr. Louis Brandt, now a practicing veterinarian in I^ew York, and who 

 lived twelve years in Texas, ofteu witnessed these symptoms ; and per- 

 sons engaged in shipping large quantities of cattle throughout the year, 

 have told me that they have at times seen the symptoms. 



It is difficult to get at the truth ; but from personal observation, and very 

 careful and numerous inquiries, I am in a position to state that almost 

 if not quite universally in the States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, 

 and for a distance of at least two or three hundred miles inland, the 

 cattle do not attain the full weight they can and do reach elsewhere ; 

 that they very commonly appear in blooming health, and are usually free 

 from acute and marked symptoms of any disease ; that, nevertheless, 

 these animals are usually more an.nemic and less firm than northern cat- 

 tle, and that, without exception, all of them that I have dissected have 

 shown the spleen enlarged to twice or thrice its usual weight, the liver 

 slightly or very fatty, and the true stomach reddened and eroded. The 

 removal of these animals to a northern State results, especially as Avinter 

 approaches, in a diminished size of spleen, a great deposit of fat and 

 development of blood and muscle, and the cicatrization of the gastric 

 lesions. 



Side by side with observations made by me in Texas, on the bodies of 

 animals that had died, and on others slaughtered in apparent health, 

 must be placed Mr. Tiavenel's researches in relation to the cryptogamic 

 origin of the disease. I do not wish to forestall his observations, or the 

 report of Doctors Billings and Curtis, but certainly it appeared that the 

 grasses which the animals ate had a healthy aspect, were not infected by 

 parasitic plants, and could not, on a casual observation, be recognized 

 as presenting any peculiar character that might account for the ill health 

 of animals eating tliem. 



Conjecture is not always profitable, and fs yet it is impossible to say 

 more with certainty than that, in a warm country, where a rich and re- 

 tentive soil is ever charged with considerable moisture, and where arti- 

 ficial systems of culture are in their infancy, a general low tone of sys- 



