REMARKS ON THE CATTLE DISEASES, 163 



ferred by its inoculation under favorable circumstances, tobealtliy people, 

 and indeed to all warm-blooded creatures ; but there are indigenous mal- 

 adies, somewhat allied to the splenic fever of cattle, developed under like 

 conditions, and capable of moderate extension from the districts where 

 they originate spontaneously. But the cattle in the south are affected 

 with a maladythatisnot inoculable, that is not propagated by the bites 

 of insects and by the transference of decomposed or poisoned blood and 

 tissues into the structures of healthy men or animals, and manifests in its 

 method of propagation more of the features of cholera than of other prop- 

 erly recorded malady. It does not belong to the group of epizootics proper, 

 or contagious diseases like pleuropneumonia, rinderpest, and the varied 

 forms of variola. It is not an infectious disease ; and the single observa- 

 tion reported by the ISTew York commissioners cannot outweigh the hun- 

 dreds we have observed and carefully traced, and which indicate that the 

 cattle are not discharging, by their breath or skin, into the air around 

 them, the principles capable of perpetuating the malady. The plagues 

 I)roper spread regardless of soil, climate, food, geological formation, 

 altitude, &e., wherever sick animals approach or touch healthy ones. 

 Splenic fever is not communicated by a cow to its calf, and is absolutely 

 stoi)ped by a fence, unless some accident leads to the mingling together 

 of the southern animals with others they are capable of injuring. The 

 malady, engendered with peculiar virulence in western or eastern cattle, 

 is not, unless exceptionally — and no properly attested exception has 

 come to my knowledge — communicated by these to other amimals that 

 have not traversed the trails of Texan and other southern herds. It is a 

 modification, a poisoning of the food and possibly of the water tainted 

 by the manure of the southern cattle, whereby the malady is transmitted. 

 It is thus with human cholera. I do not wish it to be understood that 

 splenic fever is at all allied to cholera beyond the peculiar and ordinary 

 method of propagation from certain centers. We know nothing of 

 the spontaneous development of cholera and the centers whence it 

 springs. We can witness the independent and primary i^roduction of 

 the Texas or Florida fever by transporting western or eastern cattle to 

 the south, where, fed on the pastures apart from other animals, they con- 

 tract the disease and die. 



Aniuially the Texan steers suffer, so far as my observations on cattle of 

 all ages go, from this same local influence, which, in their acclimatized 

 systems, does not usually lead to death. There is doubtless something 

 tangible and ponderable, which some future chemist may reveal, that ren- 

 ders the grasses, and maybe the waters, of the south so deleterious. 



The disease, therefore, to which the third of the annexed reports refers, 

 is an indigenous or enzootic malady, susceptible of moderate extension 

 by tlie manner in which the grasses of healthy regions are modified by 

 the manure scattered broadcast from the systems of southern herds. It 

 is not a contagious plague, and Avill probably cease when the agriculture 

 of the soutll is fairly and fully developed. 



