CATTLE PLAGUE— RINDERPEST 333 



Treatment. — A medicinal treatment is useless in hog 

 cholera. Once the disease has broken out it is usually recom- 

 mendable to kill all swine showing intensive symptoms. The 

 carcasses should be rendered harmless by cremation or deep 

 burial. A thorough disinfection should follow, viz., all litter, 

 droppings, etc., should be burned. Feed troughs, sheds, hog 

 houses, etc., disinfected (cresol 3 per cent.). Lime should be 

 scattered abundantly. • Hogs which show mild symptoms or 

 are carrying temperature should be inoculated with Dorset 

 serum (obtainable from some State experiment stations, 

 agricultural colleges, livestock sanitary boards, but not from 

 the Bureau of Animal Industry). There are two ways of 

 applying this serum: one known as the "serum alone" 

 method,' used in infected hogs, and the "simultaneous 

 method," serum and virulent blood being injected simulta- 

 neously into the medial aspects of the thighs of swine which 

 show no symptoms of the disease and carry no fever. 



CATTLE PLAGUE. RINDERPEST. 



Definition. — Cattle plague is a very fatal contagious disease 

 of cattle and buffalo of Oriental countries, which is character- 

 ized by a severe croupous and diphtheritic inflammation of 

 the mucous membranes, especially of the digestive tract. It 

 sometimes involves the outer skin. 



Occurrence. — Cattle plague never existed in the United 

 States, While formerly it was generally distributed through- 

 out France, Germany, England, at the present time, except 

 for the Balkan peninsula, Europe is free from it. The dis- 

 ease is common in Africa and Asia, however, where it is today 

 notoriously prevalent in Russia and the Philippine Islands. 

 The disease is rare in sheep and camels which offer consider- 

 able resistance to inoculation. Solipeds and carnivora are 

 naturally immune. 



Etiology. — Cattle plague is due to an ultramicroscopic virus 

 found in the blood, tissue fluids, exudates and in the secretions 

 and excretions (bile, urine, feces, saliva, tears, sweat) of the 

 body of an infected animal. The virus is not modified by 



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