754 



DISEASES AND ABNORMALITIES. 



agent can be spontaneously developed. Franck could not produce the 

 disease spontaneously, however; for though he administered in milk, and 

 to sheep, goats, and rabbits a quantity of the intestinal matter which 

 swarmed with bacteria, no positive result was noted. 



This, however, can scarcely be deemed a satisfactory experiment ; and 

 it would be better to try the effects of the morbid products on sucking 

 calves or other creatures of the teat. If nothing is at present known as 

 to the manner in which the contagium acts, or its origin, as little are we 

 acquainted with its mode of transmission or its vital tenacity. We can 

 only assert that such contagium must exist, from the manner in which the 

 disease spreads, and from the other evidence already adduced. 



It is interesting to note in this respect, that a case is recorded in which, 

 in an infected shed, of twin calves one was attacked with " white scour " 

 and died, while the other remained sound. And when pregnant Cows 

 are transferred from an infected to a healthy stable and soon after calve 

 there, yet their progeny may still be attacked. But if the transfer has 

 taken place so long as six weeks or two months before parturition, then 

 there is indeed but little risk of the young creatures being seized with 

 the diarrhoea. 



Roloff {Mittheilwtgen aus der Thierarztlichen Praxis, 1875, P- 1 19), from his experience 

 of the disease, concluded that it was due to a " stable miasma." " The malady will 

 suddenly appear in a cowshed, and vanish again after a time, without any alteration 

 having been made in the feeding or management of the Cow. I was consulted in a case 

 of this kind, where, in a large cowshed, during eight weeks every calf produced therein 

 had perished. The calves were generally, about the second day after birth, uneasy, 

 bellowed, appeared to be suffering from abdominal pain, had no appetite, rapidly lost 

 condition, passed watery stools, and died within twenty-four hours. All remedies tried 

 — among them, large doses of ojaium — were useless. Some of the new-born calves 

 were fed on skimmed milk, others on boiled milk diluted with water, while others 

 received no milk at all, but were fed on oatmeal gruel with which preparations of iron 

 were mixed— but all to no purpose, as they died all the same. The feeding of the 

 Cows was in every way good, and had not varied from that of other times, when this 

 disease did not appear. Roloff therefore concluded that the mortality was due to a 

 miasma in the shed ; consequently all the Cows which had not yet calved were removed 

 to another dry and airy shed. In this they brought forth at various times, and the 

 calves remained healthy." 



In a second instance, the malady broke out suddenly in a cowshed at the commence- 

 ment of 1874. The calves were apparently healthy when born, but in about two days 

 they became unwell and soon died in the usual way. As an experiment, some new-born 

 calves were not allowed to get milk from their parent, but were fed on milk from Cows 

 in other sheds where the disease did not exist. On the second day, however, the calves 

 sickened all the same, and succumbed. The feeding of the Cows was modified, but 

 without benefit. 



In a third instance, Roloff mentions that, for a long time, all the calves in a large cow- 

 shed had perished in a similar manner, and though many of them had not received any 

 of their mother's milk — some of them no food at all — yet it made no difference. This 

 instance was particularly conclusive that the milk of the parent was certainly not the 

 cause of the disorder. The Cows near their time for calving were moved from this 

 shed into another some distance away, and the change was attended with the happiest 

 results. 



With regard to the disease in lambs, we find Benedikt [Sdchsen Jahresbericht, 1871, p. 

 140) describing it under the head of " typhus diarrhoea in Sheep" [Typhbse Ruhr bei 

 Schafen), He writes : " At the commencement of lambing-time, the lambs are observed, 

 soon after birth, to be dull and dejected ; they do not care to suck ; there is great 

 debility ; the eye is dull and sunken ; there are involuntary evacuations of a foetid, 

 brownish-yellow color, which is ejected some distance ; and in three or four hours death 

 ensues. In all the cases the lambs, when born, appeared to be quite healthy ; but in 

 two or three hours after they began to exhibit these .symptoms, and during the first, 

 seldom the second day, they perished. On examination of the carcase, bright-red 

 spots are observed in the true stomach and intestines, which contain matter having an 



