84 WASTAGE OF ANIMALS IN WAR. 



The seriousness of the disease, apart from mortahty, is that 

 the land on which animals have died and blood has been spilt, 

 remains infective for many years, and if grazed on, say after 

 rain, a recrudescence of the disease is apt to occur. 



Surra. (The word signifies " rotten " in the vernacular). 



Until within recent years we had no records of the incidence 

 of, and mortality from this disease in the Army; and Civil 

 reports and returns throw absolutely no light on the subject. 

 In Frontier Expeditions a large number of camels were hired 

 and were replaced by contractors if they died, and the closing 

 of their account by compensation was of much more importance 

 to the owners than any fine definition of the maladies by which 

 they were spirited away. I should say that a good deal of the 

 Debility and Exhaustion of camels in former days was really 

 Surra, and in all probability this disease is at the root of a 

 considerable amount of the Debility (poor condition), pneu- 

 monia, skin and other diseases encountered in these animals 

 at the present day. The causal agent, a protozoon living in 

 the blood and destroying it, was only discovered in 1880 (by 

 an English Army Veterinary Surgeon, who was the first man 

 to demonstrate Trypanosomes) and the disease in essence is a 

 pernicious anaemia — a wasting away, and death. Affected 

 equines die in from one to two months; camels, in which it 

 is usually chronic, may live to three years and over. The 

 factors concerned in the spread of the disease are diseased 

 animals, constituting reservoirs of the infective agent, blood- 

 sucking or biting flies as inoculators, and susceptible animals, 

 into which the inoculators ' transfer the infective agent 

 mechanically. It is a very simple process so far as we know,, 

 and these factors very materially guide us in control of the 

 disease. The disease so far as our present researches go is 

 incurable— at least in the practical domain of treatment. So 

 serious has the Surra situation become in recent years that 

 a Standing Surra Committee has been appointed at the 

 instance of and under the direct guidance of the Civil and 

 Military Administrations, and their efforts bid more than fair 

 to achieve very happy results, which will not only preserve the 

 camel — which is the principal animal concerned, from deci- 



