SHEEP FROM CUMBERLAND DISEASE OR SPLENIC FEVER. 47 



Why should this great mortality take place and is there no 

 means by which it could be prevented 1 I will not refer to 

 vaccination which is certainly the best means to reduce the mor- 

 tality to a minimum, but will allude to some other methods which 

 may tend to this end. 



Australian Cumberland Disease is no more virulent than its 

 European prototype, and animals are no more susceptible in Aus- 

 tralia to the effects of the virus of the disease than they are in 

 Europe. I have ascertained this by inoculating guinea-pigs and 

 rabbits with the virus and find that they succumbed to its effects 

 after the same lapse of time as they do in Europe. Moreover as 

 is the case in France, all cattle do not die after a virulent inocu- 

 lation. At the Junee demonstration nineteen sheep inoculated 

 with blood taken from an animal which had died from Cumberland 

 Disease succumbed in from thirty to sixty-three hours after 

 inoculation, the average period of incubation being practically 

 the same as was the case with twenty sheep which died in France 

 as a result of a similar experiment made by M. Pasteur himself 

 upon animals under conditions identically the same. 



But although in Australia the microbe is not more virulent 

 than in Europe, there are nevertheless cases in which death ensues 

 very rapidly. It is said that, more especially among travelling 

 sheep, periods of incubation lasting only eighteen to twenty hours 

 have been known. At the time of the experiments made at 

 Junee, the following were undertaken in order to see whether 

 exhaustion resulting from over-driving could account for such a 

 short period of incubation. 



Four sheep were inoculated at 2 p.m., on the 5th October, with 

 blood taken from the heart of a sheep which had died of Anthrax. 

 The sheep were then kept moving for six or seven hours in the 

 paddock, as if they were being driven on the road. In this way 

 their temperature was raised considerably over what it would 

 have been if the sheep had been left quietly in the paddock ; and 

 they suffered in some degree from exhaustion, but not to anything 



