EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
415 
First, we may observe that it is a highly infectious malady; 
none more so, and that the materies morbi may be carried to 
healthy animals by persons visiting the sick, equally as well 
as the diseased being brought within a short distance of them. 
If allowed to take its natural course only for a few days, it 
will be found that the deaths not unfrequently number as 
much as 90 percent., the major part of the animals dying on 
the third or fourth day from the time of the attack. When 
the animal sickens, the affection will be recognised by almost 
continuous spasmodic twitchings of the voluntary muscles 
of the body, more particularly those of the neck and 
shoulders, and of the hind quarters. These twitchings are 
accompanied by tremors, which are more generally diffused, 
and which interrupt the regularity of the spasms, and give 
to the animal an appearance of suffering from exposure to 
cold. The coat stares, and the patient stands with its 
back arched and its legs gathered up under the body, but 
does not seemingly suffer much acute pain. In the course 
of a few hours rumination is suspended, and the appetite 
fails, but water will generally be partaken of almost up 
to the end. The temperature of the body is variable, a 
slightly increased warmth of skin existing at the beginning 
of the illness, but which soon gives way to a chilliness of 
the surface, and this again to a deathly coldness of the ears, 
legs, and horns, as the malady advances to a fatal termination. 
The pulse is scarcely disturbed at first, unless the attack is a 
severe one, when it quickly rises to about 70, but wants tone 
in its action. In all ordinary cases it becomes gradually 
more frequent in number, but less in force, and in the latter 
stages can only be felt at the heart. The respiration is but 
very little altered at the commencement ; it rarely becomes 
difficult, and was never painful in any of the cases we 
witnessed. It sometimes rises to thirty on the second day; 
but as the contractions of the abdominal muscles are often 
interrupted in their rhythmical action by the spasmodic 
twitchings a singular motion is given to the animal’s flanks, 
which has led some observers to speak of a difficulty of 
breathing being present. A discharge comes on early from 
