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MALADIE DD COIT OR DODRINE 



Ottawa, November 15, 1907. 



The Honourable 



The Minister of Agriculture, 

 Ottawa. 



Sm, — I have the honour to present herewith a brief special report on the disease 

 known as Dourine or Maladie du Coit, which has, for some years, existed to a limited 

 degree among horses in certain districts in Southern Alberta and in one locality in 

 Southwestern Saskatchewan. 



The most interesting features of this report will be found in the accounts furnished 

 by Dr. Higgins, pathologist to this branch of your Department, and his assistants, Dr. 

 Watson and Dr. Hadwen, of the work done by them in investigating and determining 

 the true nature of the disease as also of the efforts made by them to discover some 

 more reliable and practical method of diagnosis than is at present available and, at the 

 same time some reliable curative or, if possible prophylactic agent. 



As has been already announced, the identity of the disease found in America with 

 that seen and recognized in various countries of the old world has now been established 

 beyond question, through the successful identification by Dr. Watson in February last, 

 of the Trypanosoma Equiperdum or Bougeti, the specific causal organism of Dourine. 



As the detailed reports of Drs. Higgins and Watson are in themselves very full 

 and complete, I leave to these gentlemen the task of presenting the results of their 

 scientific labours, and confine myself to a short historical review of our experience 

 with this disease since the first discovery of its existence in Canada. 



In this review there will, naturally, be but little new information, most of the 

 facts having been already submitted in previous annual reports, but, for the sake of 

 convenience, I have thought it best to summarize them, together with some intervening 

 data as an explanatory introduction to the more strictly technical contributions 

 which follow. 



The presence of dourine in Canada was discovered in 1904 when Inspector 

 Burnett, Chief Veterinary Officer of the Eoyal Northwest Mounted Police, and at 

 tliat time also an official of this branch, reported its existence in a stallion and several 

 mares owned by a rancher near Lethbridge. 



As soon as possible after receiving this information, I made a personal investiga- 

 tion and although quite satisfied as to the correctness of Inspector Burnett's diagnosis, 

 determined, in consideration of the critical nature of the matter, and of its grave 

 importance to the horsebreeding industry of Canada and to that of Alberta in par- 

 ticular, to ask Dr. Salmon, then Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry at Washing- 

 ton, to detail an inspector familiar with dourine to visit and examine the affected 

 animals. My principal reason for adopting this course was that, while the disease 

 had never before been seen in Canada, it had made its appearance from time to time, 

 in widely separated localities, in the United States ever since its first introduction to 

 'Illinois by a French horse in the year 1882. These outbreaks, due to the fact that the 

 true nature of the malady had not been recognized until 1887 and that, in the inter- 

 vening five years, many contact horses had left the area originally infected and become 

 widely scattered, had given the American inspectors a fund of experience altogether' 

 lacking among our own veterinarians. 



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