THE CATTLE MURRAIN OE INDIA. 
19 
but no eruption (death occurs before the eruptive period of 
gootee). Dr. McLeod thinks the eruption probably may be 
found in cases that recover. Some die after a few hours’ 
illness ; the majority on the second or third day after the 
commencement of dysentery, or between the fourth and 
sixth days is the average of several outbreaks. Complete 
restoration occurs in about thirty days. 
Dr. McLeod says, “Although the absolute loss of cattle 
in Bengal is probably less from this form of disease than from 
gootee, the ratio of deaths to seizures is much greater it 
has been variously estimated at from 50 to 95 per cent. ; 
small herds have been entirely swept off. In British Birmah 
the loss in 1865 was estimated at 100,000, but the numbers 
that escaped infection is not named. This disease, like 
gootee, exhausts itself and disappears, though carelessness 
and indifference, or rather trusting to fate, as the natives 
express it, gives every facility for extension ad infinitum. 
I have appended in a tabular form (see pages 20 — 23), noted 
almost in the words of the observers, the morbid appearances in 
several epizootics ; their similarity is remarkable, but the cattle 
disease of England differed in several respects, sufficient, I 
think, to deter us from including all under the one head of 
rinderpest (other observers have described post-mortem ap- 
pearances too imperfectly to be of use for comparison). 
VII. Treatment. 
There is no specific, therefore we must have recourse to 
palliatives. 
1st. Segregation rigorously and properly carried out is of 
the utmost importance. 
2nd. The liberal administration of nutritious fluid diet, 
with assiduous attention to general comfort. 
3rd. Medicinal agents must depend on the state of the 
patient, and the resources of the district. I am no advocate 
for Dr. Norman McLeod’s eighty-six prescriptions. 
4th. Carcases should have their skins slashed (to make 
them valueless), and be immediately buried ; as chumars,]dogs, 
jackals, and birds of prey, may easily spread the infection. 
5th. Inoculation. Of its utility and importance it is of 
little use speculating, when we reflect on the innumerable 
difficulties of such research in India ; but the extraordinary 
triumph of vaccinia over variola makes me think the relation 
of gootee to puschima highly worthy of thorough investi- 
gation, with the view of determining whether inoculation 
(In continuation see p. 24.) 
