16 OSSEOUS CACHEXIA. 



Abundance or apparent richness of food signifies nothing if quality is 

 lacking. 



It may also be asked : if the question of nourishment is of such prime 

 importance why are animals of European origin in Cochin- China 

 affected, whilst the indigenous races prove immune? The answ^er 

 would appear to be that, in addition to the defective quality of food, 

 other factors, such as adaptation to environment and relative digestive 

 powder, play a considerable part in the production of the disease. 



FaYOuring causes. Whilst conceding that the disease is due to one 

 determining cause, viz. the food, it is unquestionable that other causes 

 may favour its aj^pearance. Abundant milking is one, so that the 

 disease most frequently appears six to eight weeks after calving. Gesta- 

 tion may also determine an attack. The disease is rarer in oxen than in 

 milch cows. Starvation and bad hygienic conditions also have a certain 

 influence; it is well known that during dry years, particularly when 

 fodder is scarce, osseous cachexia makes the greatest ravages. Law 

 states that the disease has been attributed to excess of organic matter in 

 the soil, to succulent w^atery foods, as rank watery grasses, potatoes, 

 turnips and other roots deficient in nutritious solids. Some agent — 

 microbe or toxin — swallowed with the food has been suspected but not 

 yet isolated. 



Other explanations have been advanced but uj) to the present time 

 they scarcely deserve to be regarded even as hypotheses. Thus Anacker 

 in 1865 declared that the disease Commenced as muscular rheumatism, 

 was succeeded by destructive or atrophic ostitis, and ended as osteo- 

 porosis. So far as the order of the osseous lesions is concerned, this 

 view is quite correct, but the ossific changes are consequences and not 

 causes. 



The idea that the disease w^as due to an infectious agent has been 

 advocated by Leclainche, without, however, having been proved. 

 Petrone is the only person who has hitherto suggested that osteo- 

 malacia in man is due to infection with a nitric ferment {Micrococcus 

 nitrificans). According to him, pure cultures of this organism injected 

 into dogs, produce osteomalacia. These statements, however, require 

 confirmation. 



Lesions. The chief lesions are to be found in the bones. They 

 consist in rarefaction of the compact tissue, increase in size of the 

 medullary cavity and Haversian canals, and enlargement of the areolae 

 of the spongy tissue. The bone marrow loses its fatty constituents, 

 appears red and gelatinous, and contains a greatly exaggerated number 

 of blood-vessels. When heated, the bones do not yield oil as in healthy 

 subjects, and when dry, they seem abnormally porous. In the osteo- 

 clastic phase, the bones become very friable and even the shafts assume 



