A COLONY IN THE MAKING 
CHAP. 
138 
outbreaks goes up to 80 per cent. Animals which 
have had the disease and recover are immune. Ticks 
which, having satiated themselves with blood, drop off 
are thereby purged of the disease, and the eggs of that 
insect cannot produce progeny which can themselves at 
first directly impart the same. Game form a suitable 
host to these ticks, since, though immune themselves to 
the disease, they purge every tick which gorges herself 
at their expense. Those people, therefore, who would 
find in an outbreak of East Coast fever an excuse for 
the destruction of the game, do so in ignorance of the 
real facts. Prevention lies in fencing, in dipping, or 
by obtaining a serum with which to inoculate. To 
attain this last end—obviously the best method of the 
three, if practicable—the disease had to be transmitted 
by inoculation from a sick to a healthy beast. After 
defying research for eight years, this stage was reached 
in 1909. It is now reported that the requisite serum 
has been discovered. If this proves correct, the 
greatest, one might almost say the only, deterrent to 
stock raising in the Protectorate has disappeared. 
Gastro-enteritis (Coccidiosis) was first definitely 
known in the Protectorate in 1908, but the symptoms 
and post-mortem appearances are so similar to those of 
rinderpest that there is little doubt that the two 
diseases have existed side by side for, at all events, 
some years. It differs from the latter—according 
to Mr. D. R. Brandt in the Agricultural Journal 
—in that: (1) Full-grown animals frequently recover; 
(2) it is the young stock that die, and in them anaemia 
is nearly always present; (3) the rinderpest odour is 
absent; (4) diarrhoea is not so severe ; (5) the speed 
of the disease is slower. The best treatment is a 
purgative given early in the attack. Prevention is 
