DISEASES OF THE OX AND SHEEP. 26 1 



to believe that in the end it may tend to do good, by future 

 generacions reaping benefit from the costly experiences at the 

 present time." {The Cattle-Plague. By John Gamgee, 

 London : Robert Hardwick, 1866. See page 20.) 



Cattle-plague is a febrile disease, capable of being readily 

 transmitted from animal to animal, either by direct contact, or 

 «ven by propagation of the micrococci, by which the disease is 

 in all probability caused, through the medium of the air. It 

 attacks bovine animals and sheep, and may possibly be commu- 

 ■nicated to pachyderms. So far as we know, it has not been 

 proved to attack mankind, though it is quite possible that it 

 may be capable of doing so. 



If an animal recover from one attack, it is very unlikely to 

 suflfer again from the same disease. There is no doubt that 

 human beings, as well as animals such as dogs, can carry the 

 virus of cattle-plague and distribute it. In all cases of infectious 

 diseases great care should be taken to submit one's clothes to 

 thorough disinfection, after having attended diseased animals. 

 The doctor and the veterinary surgeon should always take this 

 precaution in regard to any disease which is liable to spread by 

 infection or contagion. It has been said that in Russia one 

 common cause of wide-spread outbreaks of cattle-plague was 

 " the practice of calling priests and people together to pray in 

 cattle-sheds that the plague might be stayed, and the assembled 

 people moving thence from farm to farm." (Gamgee.) It was, 

 moreover, demonstrated by Vicq d'Azyr in the last century, that 

 if the clothes, which had been worn by those who tended 

 diseased cattle, were placed on healthy animals, three out of 

 -six would be seized with the malady. These observations 

 would seem to show that human beings are not, at any rate 

 easily, susceptible to the disease, but that they can carry the 

 infection. 



The eflfects of the malady are chiefly upon the lining of the 

 respiratory and digestive passages. The cells which compose 

 the outer layer of the skin, and those of which the internal 

 'lining of the respiratory and digestive passages is made up, are 

 filled with more plasmic fluid than usual, and then they rapidly 

 undergo a kind of fatty degeneration. 



Recently minute vegetable organisms called '* micrococci " 

 have been found in the blood and in the lymphatic glands of 



