394 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



mark, Great Britain, and a few other countries, demonstrates in a 

 striking manner the efficacy of slaughtering and the futility of rely- 

 ing upon quarantine alone to stamp out the disease. 



Inoculation has been adopted in some countries in order to have 

 the disease spread quickly through the herds, and while this practice 

 has undoubted value where the disease is indigenous, it is not de- 

 sirable in this country and should not be adopted. 



As a rule medicinal treatment with a view of curing affected ani- 

 mals is not to be recommended imder conditions prevailing in the 

 United States, where the disease has not become established, and the 

 first object is to stamp it out as quickly as possible. Even though 

 most animals would recover, with or without treatment, it would be 

 practically impossible, while they were being held for recovery, to 

 prevent the spread of the infection to others. The disease would 

 be liable to spread faster than it could be cured. As already pointed 

 out, it has been found impossible to prevent absolutely the spread 

 of the contagion by the strictest quarantine alone, under the usual 

 farm conditions. In addition, the affected animals that have passed 

 through the disease ma}^ become a source of further infection as 

 virus carriers for weeks and months after they have apparently re- 

 covered, and are susceptible of reinfection, as one attack does not 

 confer permanent immunit}^ 



Foot-and-mouth disease in man. — Foot-and-mouth disease is pri- 

 marily and principally a disease of cattle ; secondarily and casually, 

 a disease of man. It is transmissible to man through the eating or 

 drinking of raw milk, buttermilk, butter, cheese, and whey from 

 animals suffering from foot-and-mouth disease. It is also trans- 

 mitted directly, though more rarely, from the salivary secretions or 

 other infected material which may gain entrance through the mucous 

 membrane of the mouth. It is doubtful whether the disease can be 

 transmitted to man by cutaneous or subcutaneous inoculation, though 

 it is probable that the infection may be communicated if the virus 

 directly enters the blood through wounds of any kind. Children 

 are not infrequently infected by drinking unboiled milk during the 

 periods in which the disease is prevalent in the neighborhood, while 

 persons in charge of diseased animals may become infected through 

 contact with the diseased parts or by milking, slaughtering, or caring 

 for the animals. 



The symptoms in man resemble those observed in animals. There 

 is fever, sometimes vomiting, painful swallowing, heat and dryness 

 of the mouth, followed by an eruption of vesicles on the mucous 

 membrane of the mouth, and very rarely by similar ones on the 

 fingers. The vesicles appear on the lips, gums, cheek, and edge of 

 the tongue, and are about the size of a pea. The vesicles soon rup- 

 ture, leaving a small erosion which is soon covered by a thin crust 



