EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
609 
contact, or which may feed on pastures over which Texan 
cattle have passed. The precise source of the infection does 
not appear to have been determined, but the general and, 
we may add, reasonable idea is that the poison is contained 
in the excrement of the Texan beasts, and that the roads 
and lands along their route are, as a matter of course, 
contaminated. 
Cattle which take the disease from Texan cattle seldom 
recover. Nine out of every ten attacked are looked upon as 
lost, but the infection of the malady, oddly enough, dies * 
with them; indeed, neither living nor dead are they a source 
of danger to other cattle. All this reads very much like a 
romance in pathology, but the statements in support of this 
view are so numerous that we could not offer any justifica¬ 
tion for doubting its truth; but we may remark that the 
disease stands alone in this respect among maladies which 
are communicable from sick to healthy subjects. 
Notwithstanding the special kind of infectiveness which 
belongs to Texas fever, it is evident that its fatal character 
would result in an undesirable addition to our list of diseases, 
already sufficiently long, and becomes the more necessary to 
guard against its entrance. The evidence which we have 
at present as to the wasted appearance of the American 
cattle at Liverpool, is not sufficient to permit us to attempt 
to determine whether the disease is Texas Fever or the 
ordinary splenic fever of this country, hut it is worthy of 
note that while the general indications were those of splenic 
fever, no Bacteria have been found in the blood, a fact which 
is probably due to the circumstance that the animals 
which were examined did not die of the disease but were 
slaughtered in the ordinary course by the butcher. Under 
these circumstances it may be assumed that the normal time 
for the appearance of the rods had not arrived. Experi¬ 
ments have been made with the object of ascertaining if the 
rods could be cultivated from splenic blood, but up to this 
time the results have been negative. Some of the morbid 
parts taken from the intestinal canal presented the deep 
erosions of the mucous membrane which are said to be 
