94 
REPORT ON THE CATTLE PLAGUE. 
the brain, and especially in the upper part of the theca 
vertebralis. The flesh is Arm, of a good colour, and has 
but little tendency to pass quickly into decomposition; indeed, 
we have not unfrequently seen it in a state fitted for food. 
Pathology .—It is difficult to speak with certainty of the 
true nature of the rinderpest, but it is evident that the mor¬ 
bific matter on which it depends, having entered the system 
through the medium of the organs of respiration, soon acts 
upon the blood, by converting some of the constituents of 
that fluid into its own elements; and that, while this 
process is going on, the animal gives no recognisable indi¬ 
cations of being the subject of the malady. This period 
constitutes the incubative stage of the disease. 
The blood, having thus become contaminated, its vitality 
impaired, and the poison augmented a thousand fold within 
the organism, the brain and nervous systems, as the centres 
of sensation and motion, have their normal function neces¬ 
sarily and quickly interfered with, and hence one of the 
earliest indications of the disease is a spasmodic twitching of 
the voluntary and other muscles of the body. 
The malady has now arrived at a stage when nature makes 
a bold effort to rid the system of the poison, and in doing 
this the force of the morbific matter, so to speak, falls with 
more or less severity on the mucous membranes throughout 
the entire body. Effusions of lymph—the fibrine of the 
blood—take place into the follicles of the mucous mem¬ 
branes, as an effect, perhaps, in part of the overtaxing 
of these grand excretory organs, and partly because the 
fibrine itself is charged with the materies morbi , and has 
probably also lost some portion of its vitality, which renders 
it unfitted to remain in the vessels. Dark-coloured blood, 
and which remains fluid even after death, from its defibri¬ 
nation, now flows in the vessels; and dysenteric purging 
also sets in, under which, as a rule, the animal quickly sinks. 
in on the contrary, the vis vita should be sufficiently 
powerful to withstand so great an exhausting process, then 
the poison being cast off, and principally by the digestive 
canal, the patient slowly rallies, and the functions of the 
entire organism are gradually restored. Healthy fibrine again 
supplies the place of that which was lost, so that the 
blood will now clot when removed from the vessels, and be 
once more brought into a state to support the vitality of the 
prostrated organs. 
Ulceration of the mucous membranes, commencing in the 
follicles, may attend these processes, but it is not a necessary 
pathological condition of the pest. It is rather to be regarded 
as a sequence depending for its existence on the amount of 
