238 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



he believed to be the bacillus of diphtheria. The results are doubt- 

 ful, even in the absence of false membranes. Loffler, too, in the 

 diphtheria of calves, found that the germ was longer and more deli- 

 cate than that of man, and that its pathogenesis for rodents was 

 less, guinea pigs having only a nonfatal abscess. The presence of 

 false membranes in one form of mammitis in cows does not neces- 

 sarily imply its communicability to man. 



It has been asserted that scarlet fever has been transmitted from 

 the cow to man, and it can not be denied that in many cases the infec- 

 tion has been spread by means of the milk. The facts, however, when 

 brought out fully have shown that in almost every case the milk 

 had first come into contact with a person suffering or recovering 

 from scarlet fever, so that the milk was infected after it left the cow. 

 The alleged exceptional cases at Hendon and Dover, England, are 

 not conclusive. In the Hendon outbreak inoculations were made on 

 calves from the slight eruption on the cow's teats, and they had a 

 slight eruption on the lips and a form of inflammation of the kidneys, 

 which Dr. Klein thought resembled that of scarlatina. The cows that 

 had brought the disease to the Hendon dairies were traced back to 

 Wiltshire, where cows were found suffering from a similar malady, 

 but no sign of scarlet fever resulted. In the Dover outbreak the 

 dairyman first denied any disease in his cows, and brought a certifi- 

 cate of a veterinarian to prove that they were sound at the time of the 

 investigation; then later he confessed that the cows had had foot- 

 and-mouth disease some time before, and consequent eruption on the 

 teats. So the question remains whether the man who denied sickness 

 in the cows to begin with, and adduced professional evidence of it, 

 did not later acknowledge the foot-and-mouth disease as a blind to 

 hide the real source of the trouble in scarlatina in his own family or 

 in the family of an employee. 



In America Dr. Stickler said that he had produced scarlatina 

 in children by inoculation with imported virus of foot-and-mouth dis- 

 ease, but his contention is negatived by the facts that with foot-and- 

 mouth disease constantly present in Europe scarlatina does not ac- 

 company it, and that in America, with scarlatina constantly prevail- 

 ing at some point, foot-and-mouth disease is unknown locally except 

 at long intervals and as the result of the importation of infected ani- 

 mals or their products. Man is susceptible to foot-and-mouth disease, 

 but it never appears during the frequent epidemics of scarlatina. 



Among other contagious forms of mammitis I may name one which 

 I have encountered in large dairies, starting as a sore and slight 

 swelling at the opening of the teat and extending up along the milk 

 duct to the gland structure in the bag, all of which become indurated, 

 nodular, and painful. The milk is entirely suppressed in that quarter 



