Specific Contagious Diseases. 105 



and with the urine causing bloody discharges from tlie kid- 

 nej'S, yellowness of the mucous membranes and fat, great 

 prostration and debility. 



Symptoms. There seems to be an incubation of four or 

 five weeks, ending in elevated temperature (103° to 107°) 

 and followed in five to seven days by dullness, languor, 

 drooping head till the nose reaches the ground, arched back, 

 hind legs advanced under the belly and bent at the fetlocks, 

 cough more or less frequent, muscular trembling about the 

 flanks, jerking of the neck muscles, heat of horns, ears, and 

 general surface (limbs cold, in exceptional cases) and im- 

 paired appetite and rumination. Soon weakness compels 

 lying down, by choice in water, eyes are glassy and fixed, 

 secretions lessened, dung hard and coated with mucus, or 

 with clots of blood, and the urine changes to a deep red or 

 black and coagulates on boiling. The mucous membranes 

 are of a deep yellow or brown, that of the rectum, seen in 

 passing dung, is of a dark red, as in Kinderpest. 



All these symptoms become aggravated, weakness be- 

 comes extreme, and the patient dies in a state of stupor, or 

 sometimes in convulsions. 



The disease usually passes unnoticed in the Texau cattle, 

 but is exceedingly fatal in Northern beasts. 



Contagion takes place through the bowel discharges, and 

 roads, pastures, water-courses, etc., become efficient bearers 

 of the virus. It is destroyed at once by frost, and has never 

 been satisfactorily demonstrated to be conveyed from one 

 JSTorthern animal to another. Sucking calves rarely suffer. 

 One attack does not protect against another. There is a 

 strongly ref rangent micrococcus in the bile and blood. Det- 

 mers has also found a bacillus. 



Prevention. It should be enforced by United States law 

 that no Gulf-coast cattle should be moved north excepting 

 after the first frosts of autumn, or before the last frosts of 

 spring. Then would the traffic be safe for all the North. 



