PAPERS COMPETING FOR THE REVIEW PRIZE. 
103 
PAPERS COMPETING FOR THE REVIEW PRIZE. 
STUDIES OF A CATTLE DISEASE HITHERTO ILL UNDERSTOOD. 
Common Name —Mad Itch ; 
New Name given —Enzootic Meningitis. 
By A. Westerner, M.D., Y.S. 
There frequently occurs, (in the great West at least), a very 
destructive disease among cattle, which is known as “ Mad Itch.” 
In vain have tried to trace it in the German, French, English 
and American pathologies at my command. Nowhere have I 
been fortunate enough to find a parallel. True, I find in the de¬ 
scriptions of meningitis and of “ grass staggers ” (dry murrain), 
given by Professors Law, Williams, Gamgee, Roll and others, 
some symptoms occurring in the disease I am about to describe, 
bnt the similarity is far from being satisfactory. The phenomena 
of rabies are more in accord with it than those of any other 
affection that I know. I have seen over fifty fatal cases in differ¬ 
ent localities in a comparatively short time, and I have received 
communications proving its extensive distribution over the coun¬ 
try every year. It is indeed, very frequent in the State I live in, 
and it is enzootic and almost always fatal. In the Western States 
the experienced stockmen are familiar with the word “ mad-itch,” 
and many have had some experience with some disease known by 
that name, which was given doubtless on account of the furore of 
the patient and the intense rubbing of the head. Some compe¬ 
tent veterinarians seem to ascribe its cause to so-called “ dry mur¬ 
rain ” (impaction of the third stomach) with omastitis, etc.; others 
have (justly or wrongly) believed it akin to hydrophobia, and 
again others simply call it mad-itch, without any attempt to ex¬ 
plain it. 
During the last three years the malady lias so frequently come 
to my notice, I have found it so deadly, and so rebel to all kinds 
of curative treatments, that I determined to investigate it at 
as early a period as possible. During the last five months came 
my first opportunities. They consisted in two outbreaks of the 
disease, both of which, however, were studied under considerable 
disadvantage. 
