536 REPORT—1905. 
example, an ox is infected by a tick; for fourteen days the animal remains apparently 
perfectly well ; it has no signs of disease, nor has it any fever. Itis capable of doing 
its ten miles’ trek a day. At the end of fourteen days the temperature begins to 
rise, and the animal begins to sicken with the disease, but for the next six days the 
ox is, as a rule, able to do its ordinary day’s march. During most of this time the 
brown ticks have been crawling on to this ox, becoming intected, and dropping off 
every three or four days. It can readily, therefore, be seen how much mischief a 
single infected animal can do to a country between the time of its being infected 
by the tick and its death some twenty-four days later. As a matter of experience, 
however, the disease has never been found to make a jump in this way of more 
than fifty or sixty miles, as, of course, it is very rare that a transport carrier will 
take his oxen more than that distance during the taventy days. 
At the present time it may be said that there are about 500 infected farms in 
the Transvaal. During last year some 15,000 cattle have died of the disease, and 
in the affected districts it may be said that there are still some 30,000 cattle alive. 
When one considers the value of the cattle dead of this disease, which may be 
said to be about 200,000/., it is evident that money spent on the scientific investi- 
gation of the causes and prevention of stock diseases is money well spent. I am 
informed that all the South African Governments are cutting down their estimates 
this year, and are inclined to reduce their veterinary staffs and the amounts 
devoted to research regarding animal diseases. Ladies and gentlemen, if this ia 
so, I have no hesitation in saying that this is the maddest sort of economy and the 
shortest-sighted of policies, 
Methods of combating the Disease.—During the last three years an immense 
amount of work has been done in the elucidation of this disease—how the 
animals are infected, how the poison is spread from the sick to the healthy, and so 
on. In 1903 Professor Koch was asked by the South African Colonies to study 
this disease, in order to try to find some method of artificial inoculation or some 
other means of prevention. He did his work in Rhodesia, and especially directed 
his energies towards discovering some method of preventive inoculation. At first 
it was thought that he would be successful in this quest, as in his second report he 
announced that he had succeeded in producing a modified form of the disease by 
direct inoculation with the blood of sick and recovered animals. As you are all 
aware, the only method of conferring a useful immunity upon an animal is to 
make it pass through an attack of the disease itself, so modified as not to give rise 
to above a few deaths in every hundred inoculated. This is the method that has 
been employed in such diseases as Rinderpest, Anthrax, Pleuro-pneumonia, and 
many other diseases. The great difficulty in this disease in finding a method 
of preventive inoculation is the fact that the blood of an affected animal does not 
give rise to the disease in a healthy one when directly transferred under the skin 
of the latter. It is only after its passage through the body of the tick that the 
parasite is able to give rise to the disease in a healthy animal. It is evidently, on 
the face of it, difficult to so modify the parasite during its sojourn in the tick’s 
body as to reduce its virulence to a sufficient degree. 
Professor Koch in his third and fourth reports recommended that cattle should 
be immunised by weekly or fortnightly inoculations of blood from recovered 
animals, extending over a period of five months. Even though this method of 
Koch had given the desired result, viz. that it rendered the inoculated cattle 
immune to the disease, it is evident that the method itself can hardly be made a 
practicable one on a large scale in the field. The expense and trouble of inocu- 
lating cattle on twenty different occasions would be very great. It is apparent 
now that Professor Koch fell into error through mixing up East Coast Fever with 
ordinary Redwater. His plan of preventive inoculation was, however, tried on a 
large scale in Rhodesiaby Mr. Gray, now the P.V.S., Transvaal, and found to be 
useless. At present, therefore, we must look to some other means of preventing 
the disease and driving it out of the country than preventive inoculation. 
Dipping.—Much can be done to prevent the spread of this disease by ordinary 
methods. For example: in the case of Texas Fever in Queensland dipping cattle 
in solutions of arsenic or paraffin, in order to destroy the ticks, has met with very 
