PROTOZOAN ICTERO-H^MATURIA IN SHEEP. PA- 

 LUDISM OF SHEEP. CARCEAG. PIROPI.ASMOSIS. 



This is described by Babes and Starcovici as prevailing among 

 sheep in the delta of the Danube, and held by them to be identi- 

 cal with the Roumanian Haemoglobinuria of cattle (compt. rend, 

 de r Acad, des Sciences, 1892). Its essential cause is a piro- 

 plasma affecting the red blood globules, and very analogous 

 to that of the protozoon of Texas fever, but its especial election 

 for the sheep shows a specific difference, inasmuch as the Texas 

 cattle fever does not attack sheep. Not only the parasite, but 

 the symptoms and lesions as well, furnish a close counterpart to 

 those of the cattle infection. It remains to be seen whether the 

 pathogenic difference is due to a distinction in the piroplasma or 

 to the absence from the Southern States of America of the par- 

 ticular tick or other insect which attacks the Danubian sheep. 



Bonome (1895, Virchow's Archives) describes the same 

 disease as prevailing in Italy, describing the parasite and lesions 

 at great length. 



Finally my colleague Dr. W. ly. Williams, and later Dr. 

 Knowles, have identified the disease in the upper part of Deer 

 Lodge Valley and the lower part of Silver Bow Valley in Mon- 

 tana, prevailing among sheep only, extending year by year, and 

 proving disastrous to the sheep husbandry. Sheep were intro- 

 duced into the-se valleys as early as 1875, but it was only in 1891 

 that the flock masters recognized the exi.stence of this disease. 

 By 1895 it prevailed over an area of 300 square miles. It made 

 its advent in 1891 in four or five large flocks (2,000 to 10,000 

 head each) on land which they had occupied for nine years, and 

 so disastrously that several sheep ranchers, after an experience 

 of a year or two, sold out to the butcher and abandoned the 

 sheep industry. 



All or nearly all cases seen in 1896 were in parturient ewes, 

 (4 to 6 days after parturition), the constitutional condition attend- 

 ing on lambing proving a most potent factor in causation. 



The protozoon repeated the characters of that found in the 

 sick sheep in Italy and the Danubian delta, and the conditions of 

 620 



