382 



DISEASES OF THE URINARY APPARATUS. 



to be due to a peculiar or defective composition of the soil, and to 

 a defective constitution of the grazing animals, according to the 

 statements of Stockfleth, Gerlach, Spinola, and others. Spinola 

 considers it due to an excess of vegetable acids, and Stockfleth to a 

 poison similar to sulphuretted hydrogen. Both of these opinions 

 are hypothetical, but have this fact in their favor, that the disease 

 is of+en closely dependent upon certain pastures to which the ani- 

 mals are driven ; besides, it has been observed that the grass or 

 hay coming from these pastures and fed in the stable causes red 

 urine. These alimentary substances first produce a diarrhea, then 

 a hemorrhagic gastro-enteritis, and later, after the introduction of 

 their active principles into the blood, its decomposition is the 

 result. 



Quite a number of authors, and among them Stockfleth, have 

 witnessed the manifestation of this disease in the ox after the inges- 

 tion of spoiled food (turnips and their leaves, malt, mouldy fodder); 

 the facts which they have observed tend to establish the mycotic 

 origin of hemoglobinemia. Lastly, the frequency of the disease in 

 swampy and turfy regions, which has been recognized by a large 

 number of practitioners, warrant us in admitting that it is produced 

 by a malarial agent, undoubtedly by a microbe.^ 



Those poisonous plants called "bloody urine plants,'' produce 



1 Babes has established the parasitic nature and the transmissibility of hemoglobin 

 which affects tlie bovine race in Roumania. It is especially observed in the low and 

 swampy districts. It occurs every year and is propagated in a more or less extended 

 radius, where it often does considerable harm. It produces a yearly mortality of 30,000 

 to 35,000 animals. Its main symptoms are : prostration, suppression of the appetite^ 

 difficulty of gait, an intense fever, the red coloration of urine (which generally con- 

 tains albumin and hemoglobin), constipation and diarrhea with tenesmus. Toward 

 the end of the disease, the animals remain down continually, the fever becomes in- 

 tense, and the urine dark-red or blackish; we observe, too, watering of the eyes^ 

 muscular tremblings, and subcutaneous œdema. At the autopsy of the animals that 

 have died of hemoglobinemia, the author has found in the blood and tissues certain 

 rounded, shiny micro-organisms, forming frequently diplococci ; in the blood they are 

 free or attached to the red corpuscles, or even contained in their interior. By inocu- 

 lating rabbits, in the subcutaneous connective tissue or in a vein, with blood of an 

 animal that has died from hemoglobinuria, or with cultures of the microbe of this dis- 

 ease, we produce in these animals a special morbid state, the manifestations of which 

 appear ordinarily from the eighth to the eleventh day, and which becomes fatal within 

 one or two days. At the autopsy of these rabbits we recognize in the blood, and especi- 

 ally in that of the kidneys, the microbes of the hemoglobinuria of the ox. The inocu- 

 lations when made on animals of the bovine race give variable results according to 

 the dose of blood or injected cultures. Small injections cause only a febrile state 

 without hemoglobinuria ; but in using larger doses we may produce hemoglobinuria 

 with all its usual symptomatic complications, and sometimes death. — n. d. t. 



