DISEASES OP THE BLOOD. 155 



to man. Such flesh should be thoroughly cooked, and it may 

 convey the disease to other cattle. It was concluded at the 

 International Veterinary Congress at Vienna, after evidence 

 from Professors Kawitsch and Jessen, that hard dried hides 

 will not communicate the disease. It is interesting to 

 inquire into the question whether rinderpest has intimate 

 affinities with any disease of man. This matter is fully 

 discussed in Professor Gamgee's valuable and exhaustive 

 work on the Cattle Plague. It was thought to be 

 equivalent to typhoid fever of man, but the patches of 

 Peyer do not undergo the changes characteristic of that 

 disease. Again, smallpox has been considered the patho- 

 logical equivalent, especially by Dr. Murchison, who very 

 ably supports his view, but skin lesions of the true pustular 

 character are seldom present in rinderpest. Also it is 

 difficult to understand how, if the diseases are one and the 

 same, smallpox is always present in this country and 

 rinderpest only when introduced from without. The false 

 membranes formed in cattle plague are described fre- 

 quently as diphtheritic and croupous ; the disease is often 

 termed typhus, and some superficial resemblances to 

 certain other human disorders may be noted. Suffice it to 

 say, with regard to these, that it has not been found that 

 rinderpest is the equivalent of either of them. We can 

 only consider it as a disease of a peculiar character due to 

 a special pathogenic organism — which^ probably, Klebs is 

 right in considering a bacterium. 



Cattle plague and eczema epizootica are exanthemata, 

 eruptive disorders. In addition we find that variola and 

 a special form of aphtha are mentioned under this heading 

 in bovine pathology. Recently stomatitis pustulosa has 

 been added to the list. These are specific disorders, 

 generally communicable with facility by contagion and 

 inoculation. They run their course with remarkable 

 regularity, exhibiting a number of consecutive changes of 

 a special character, culminating in the formation of vesicles 

 by accumulation of serous fluid between the corium 

 and epithelium of skin, or mucous membrane, or both. 

 The fluid of the vesicle contains the materies morbi in a 



