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CEREBROSPINAL MENINGITIS (‘‘ FORAGE POISONING ’’). 3 
practitioners recognized the disease as their old torment—cerebro- 
spinal meningitis, staggers, or forage poisoning. 
The latter name came into the literature of the disease as a 
synonym in 1900 following the investigation of an outbreak by 
Pearson. He was able to reproduce the disease in experiment 
horses by feeding them on damaged silage, and by giving them 
water to drink which had percolated through this silage. Doubtless 
influenced by the frequent absence of microscopic lesions of the 
central nervous system, and by the analogy between this disease 
and meat poisoning of man, Pearson proposed the name forage 
poisoning, which has been more or less in favor ever since. There 
are certain objections to this term, principally from the fact that it 
may suggest a form of poisoning produced by vegetation that is 
specifically poisonous, such as lupines, loco, larkspur, etc., or by 
ordinary forage that is poisonous of itself. This, however, was not 
the intention of Pearson, for by his analogy to meat poisoning it is 
evident that he did not wish to convey the impression that all forage 
was poisonous any more than all meat is poisonous. But when 
meat becomes contaminated with pathogenic bacteria, such as the 
Bacillus enteritidis, B. botulinis, etc., such meat is dangerous to 
man in the same manner that ordinary forage contaminated with 
certain unknown infective agents becomes dangerous to horses and ~ 
produces forage poisoning. In other words, the forage is the carrier 
and not the primary factor in the disease. On the other hand, 
this term has a direct advantage in being readily understood in | 
popular usage and in conveying to the layman’s mind that an 
absolute change in feed is essential. 
After years of study and experimentation it is the consensus of 
opinion of practically all investigators that the disease can be con- 
trolled effectively only by a total change of feed and forage; in other 
words, by preventive measures and not by medicinal treatment. 
That there is direct connection between ingestion of green forage, 
exposed pasturage, newly cut hay and fodder, and the development 
of the disease is quite obvious, and that the ingestion of such forage 
when contaminated is the most important factor is equally obvious, 
as almost 100 per cent of the cases in Kansas and over 95 per cent 
of the cases in Nebraska of which we have any record were maintained 
all or part of the time under such conditions. Even such negative 
history is not always dependable, as the owner on one farm informed 
the writer positively that the dead horses had eaten nothing except 
old hay and grain, but when notice was taken of the closely cropped 
grass In an adjacent pasture he innocently remarked that he always 
turned the work horses into the pasture over night. In fact in some 
sections ‘‘pasture disease”’ is the designation for this malady. 
