BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 



229 



tors, the symptoms, everything connected with the disease, led us to 

 conclude, therefore, that it could not be the contagious foot-and-mouth 

 disease. 



CHARACTERS WHICH DISTINGUISH THIS DISEASE FROM FOUL-IN-TIIE- 



FOOT, 



The disease known as foul-in-the-foot, and often called foot-rot, has 

 its origin in the skin of the interdigital space. It begins as a superfi- 

 cial inflammation, which is followed by sloughing, ulceration, suppura- 

 tion, the burrowing- of pus, and the formation of sinuses. By this pro- 

 cess the disease may gradually extend beneath the horn of the toes and 

 toward the deeper parts of the foot, until the tendons, bones, ligaments, 

 and articulations are involved. In extreme cases it may even extend 

 to or above the fetlock joint. Steel, in his new work on the " Diseases 

 of the Ox," sums up this characteristic of the disease as follows: 



Thus the pathological conditions of this disease are, at first, the existence of inflam- 

 mation in the interdigital substance, which may he partially removed by sloughing, 

 then the presence of pus beueath the hoof-horn, boring and forming simple sinuses, 

 which extend outwards and burst on the surface. The patient is very lame, and the 

 digits are separated from one another in a remarkable manner. 



That is, foul begins between the toes, forms sores there, and these 

 slowly extend by ulceration and the burrowing of pus. Neither in 

 Kansas, Missouri, nor Illinois were any such pathological characters as 

 these seen. There was sudden and complete death of a toe or of a foot, 

 or in some cases of a leg as high as the hock joint ; the disease showed 

 no tendency to extend, but was limited by a groove around the limb, 

 which soon became a crack, and the affected portion was sloughed off. 

 There was no burrowing of pus, no ulceration, and when the lifeless 

 portion of the limb had separated, the stump healed as readily as could 

 be expected. The disease was dry gangrene beyond question, and dry 

 gangrene is not produced by foul-in-the-foot. 



Again, those who so confidently pronounced the disease to be foul, 

 overlooked the gangrene of the tails, which was present in a large num- 

 ber of cases, and was most marked in those animals in which the feet 

 were most severely affected. 



Finally, the digestive disturbance and the lesions in the mouths were 

 too evidently connected with the disease in the feet to be left entirely 

 out of consideration. 



It is surprising that two diseases having such different symptoms 

 could be confounded, and the mistake of such a number of competent 

 veterinarians can only be explained on the supposition that the ex- 

 amination was hurried and superficial, and that ergotism among ani- 

 mals has received but little attention in English-speaking countries. 



OBJECTIONS WHICH HAVE BEEN URGED AGAINST THE THEORY OF 

 ERGOTISM IN KANSAS. 



When we first diagnosed the disease at Neosho Falls to be ergotism, 

 we Avere met by the objection that ergotism could not occur without 

 ergot in the food, and that this condition did not exist on the affected 

 farms. It required but a few minutes inspection of the hay racks, how- 

 ever, to satisfy the most skeptical that the hay at Keith's, Beard's, and 

 Pribbernow's contained a large quantity of ergot in the wild rye which 

 made up a considerable proportioii of the forage. And subsequent ex- 

 amination has proved its existence nearly every where that this disease 

 occurred. 



