EXPERIMENTS ON THE TREATMENT OF RINDERPEST WITH 



VARIOUS DRUGS 1 



By William Hutchins Boynton 

 (From the Bureau of Agriculture, Manila) 



The following experiments have been accomplished at various 

 times during a period of approximately six and one-half years. 

 The veterinary division, of the Bureau of Agriculture, is fre- 

 quently confronted with men who claim to have specific cures 

 for rinderpest, and when their so-called cures are given the 

 proper trial, they are found lacking in curative powers. On 

 account of these frequent claims and rumors of cures it was 

 thought advisable at this time to publish the results of our experi- 

 ments on various drugs, as these results may aid in obtaining 

 a better idea of a method of treatment and may also give a 

 clearer insight into the location of the fountain head of the 

 virus in the animal body. 



In the laboratory only highly susceptible animals are used, 

 which are obtained from localities where rinderpest has sup- 

 posedly never existed or where a considerable number of years 

 has elapsed since the last appearance of the disease. A highly 

 virulent strain of virus is also used in all the work. The viru- 

 lence of the strain is kept up by taking the infective material 

 from animals in the early stage of the disease, that is, the first 

 or second day after the initial rise in the temperature. If the 

 infective material is obtained from animals in the last stages of 

 the disease, the virus soon loses its potency, undoubtedly due to 

 the action of the antibodies upon it, which have a tendency to 

 weaken the virus and to render the results unreliable. 



If the records of the veterinary division, Bureau of Agricul- 

 ture, are consulted, it will be notice that in those localities where 

 the cures for rinderpest have been so successful the recovery of 

 animals under normal conditions has been very high, averaging 

 in many instances in the neighborhood of 60 per cent. If the per- 

 son administering the cure is at all shrewd, he can easily elimi- 

 nate the doubtful cases and in that way obtain a high percentage 

 of recoveries from his drugs, providing the drugs are not too 

 harmful to the animals and are administered in small enough 

 doses. 



1 Published in Phil. Agr'. Rev. (1917), 10, 272. 



152631 3 95 



