DISEASES FOLLOWING PARTURITION. 257 



of these germs. So in cases of mortification of the bag; in the very 

 occurrence there is fair circumstantial evidence of the presence of 

 erysipelas micrococcus or other germ which kills the local tissues. 

 Again, in tuberculosis affecting the bag (a not uncommon condition), 

 the active local cause is without doubt the tubercle bacillus. 



It is now well established that the milk ducts and gland tissue, as 

 well as any sore on the exterior of the teat or bag, may become the seat 

 of diphtheritic inflammation and the formation of the skin-like pellicles 

 that characterize that disease. Here again there is a definite germ 

 causing the disease. The liability of cattle to diphtheria was noticed 

 by Damman in connection with the epizootic outbreak in calves and 

 children in Pomerania in 1875, and, among others, Roux and Yersin 

 have since inoculated the disease from man upon animals.* Dr. Klein, 

 of London, in 1889, inoculated two cows, respectively three and four 

 weeks after calving, with the products from a case of diphtheria in 

 man, and in three days found a serous exudating sore and hard swell- 

 ing in the seat of inoculation in the right shoulder, followed by vesicles 

 (blisters) on the teats and udder, appearing from the fourth to the 

 eighth day. He found the diphtheria bacillus in these, in the shoulder 

 sore, in the milk (in which it increased enormously if left to stand at 

 68 F.), in the eruption produced in calves by inoculation with the 

 scrapings, in cats that died with diphtheria after lapping the milk, and 

 other cats that died of diphtheria after living with the former.i 



It has been claimed that scarlet fever has been transmitted from the 

 cow to man, and it can not be denied that in many cases the infection 

 has been disseminated through the milk. The facts, however, when 

 brought out fully, have shown that in almost every case the milk had 

 first come in contact with a person suffering or recovering from scarlet 

 levT, so that the milk was infected after it left the cow. The alleged 

 exceptional cases at Hendon and Dover, England, are not conclusive. 

 In the Hendon outbreak inoculations were made on calves from the 

 slight eruption on the cow's teats, and they had a slight eruption on 

 the lips and a form of inflammation of the kidneys, which Dr. Klein 

 thought resembled that of scarlatina. The cows that had brought the 

 disease to the Hendon dairies were traced back to Wiltshire, and cows 

 were found there suffering from a similar malady, but there was no 

 sign of scarlet fever resulting. In the Dover outbreak, the dairyman 

 first denied any disease in his cows, and brought the certificate of a 

 veterinarian to prove that they were sound at the time of the investi- 

 gation; then later he confessed that the cows had had foot-and-mouth 

 disease, and consequent eruption on the teats some time before. So 



* The diphtheria bacillus of calvcH, according to Loftier, i- not the name an tin- 

 human diphtheria Bacillus. There is an yet no positive evidence to prove that hu- 

 man diphtheria may be communicated to animals, excepting perhaps the cat, unless 

 this in done by direct inoculation. [Ed.] 



t Nineteenth annual report of the local government board, 1N<9-'90. 

 24G97 17 



