Tlie Cattle Plague. 269 



helt. It has been found that when an animal has been ex- 

 posed to the poison of the cattle plague, and is about to take 

 the disease, the thermometer rises to 103° or 104°, while no 

 other symptom of disease is present. 



About two days after this rise of the temperature the 

 breath becomes ill-smelling, and the mouth, as w^ell as the 

 vagina in cows, will be found unnaturally red and hot to the 

 touch, and with a slight eruption of minute blisters on its 

 surface, about the size of a pin's head. These are both very 

 characteristic symptoms. 



Even at i;his stage of the disease a clay or two may still 

 pass by without the animal showing any very positive signs 

 of being sick. But after the fourth day from the beginning 

 of these warnings is past, the constitution is thoroughly satu- 

 rated wdth the poison. Then the head begins to droop, the 

 ears hang, the pulse weakens, the breathing is difficult, and 

 there is a foul discharge from the eyes, nose and mouth. 



The next day, usually the sixth, all these symptoms grow 

 worse, the pulse becomes hardly perceptible, the breath is 

 drawn w^Ith effort, and there is great weakness in the limbs. 

 If now the temperature is taken with the thermometer, it 

 will be found below the natural heat, probably at 96° or 

 98° Fah. 



Death usually occurs on the seventh day from the time the 

 temperature first begins to rise. 



Of course, in different epidemics, and in different herds, 

 there is considerable variation from the above description ; 

 but they are those of degree only, and it will serve as a cor- 

 rect type of them all. 



• Treatment. — There is but one treatment for this terrible 

 disease, and that is the preventive one. When it appears in 

 a country, all importations of cattle, sheep, or goats from that 

 country should be positively forbidden by government; when 

 it attacks even a single steer of a herd, not only that steer, 



