394 
DR. COOPER CURTICE. 
ON THE EXTERMINATION OF THE CATTLE TICK 
AND THE DISEASE. SPREAD BY IT. 
By Dr. Cooper Curtice, of Moravia, New^Tork. 
Read before the Virginia State Veterinary Medical Association at Norfolk, Va., 
June 24, 1896. 
Gentlemen of the State Veterinary Society of Virginia : 
I am honored by your President in being invited to address 
you upon one of the two most important epizootic diseases now to 
be found among cattle in the United States. I prefer to present 
it to you under the name “ tick fever,” as the tick, Boophtlus 
bovis , is, as far as is yet known, the most important, if not the 
only, factor in its transmission. Yon will recognize by this 
name that disease to which more names have been applied than 
to any other, a fact which indicates the lack of precise knowl¬ 
edge concerning it, held either by the laity or professional, viz.: 
“ Southern Cattle Fever,” “ Splenetic Fever,” u Spanish Cattle 
Fever,” “ Texas Cattle Fever,” “ Carolina Cattle Distemper,” 
“Mexican” or “Indian Cattle Disease,” “Distemper,” “Bloody 
Murrain,” “ Red-water,” “ Hsematuria,” “ Splenic Fever,” 
“ Hsemaglobinuria,” “Tick Fever,” “Acclimatization Fever,” 
etc. 
It is the relationship between the tick and the disease and 
he means of eradicating them from Virginia and the United 
States to which I invite your attention. Repeated experiments 
by the United States Department of Agriculture, by your col¬ 
leagues, Harbaugh and Niles, of this State ; by Dinwiddie, of 
Arkansas, and, on a larger scale, by the stockmen of the coun¬ 
try, have shown conclusively that the tick does give the disease 
to susceptible cattle. Among all other experiments made to 
demonstrate another mode of infection, not one has succeeded, 
excepting the direct transmission of blood from previously in¬ 
fected, but healthy cattle, to susceptible cattle. Since this mode 
of infection is necessarily rare or never obtained by other than 
human agencies, it may be passed by as of secondary value in 
the transmission of the disease. 
