Foot and Mouth Disease. 361 



Tvhich the owners secluded the herds for some months and then 

 ■disinfected the premises with complete success. One occurred at 

 Portland Me., in 1884, in which cattle, supposedly recovered, 

 traversed the highway to the quarantine station, and a team of 

 oxen which followed them the same day contracted the disease. 

 The seclusion of both put an end to the trouble. In Asia it has 

 prevailed from time immemorial, and it was imported into South 

 America in 1870. 



Etiology. This disease has long been known as caused by 

 infection alone. Excluded from England in the middle of the 

 eighteenth century it did not appear again until re-imported in 

 the middle of the nineteenth, and then speedily overran the 

 whole island except the breeding districts into which strange 

 stock were never taken. In South America it was unknown 

 until imported from the Old World into the Argentine Republic 

 and then it made a wide extension and maintained itself where 

 the stock was kept on unfenced ranches. In our fenced North- 

 Eastern states it died out in 187 1 and was stamped out in 1903, 



The infection is especially resident in the vesicles or aphthae. 

 From the mouth this is distributed, with the abundant drivelling 

 saliva, on pastures, roads, feeding and drinking troughs, ponds, 

 streams and halters, and readily communicates the disease to 

 healthy stock following in the same places. From the feet and 

 especially the interdigital space, it is left on the vegetation, build- 

 ings, yards, cars, boats and all other possible media to infect 

 other stock in turn. From the teats it mingles with the milk so 

 as to infect the young suckling and all animals and men to whom 

 the milk maybe given. It may become dried on litter and other 

 light objects and carried by the winds, or it may be carried on 

 the feet of men or animals including birds, but apart from this it 

 is not readily diffused and oftentimes a broad highway may set a 

 limit to its propagation. 



The infecting microbe is not definitely known. Nosotti found 

 a micrococcus in the lymph of the vesicle, which stained readily 

 in aniline colors, was easily cultivated and pathogenic. Klein 

 found a steptococcus which, similiarly tested, presented an equal 

 claim to be the causative factor. Bassianus and Siegal found in 

 the blood and tissues of a person who died of foot and mouth 

 disease a small oval bacillus, which they later obtained from the 



