TEXAS FEVER A MATTER OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE. 
293 
TEXAS FEVER A MATTER OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE. 
By D. E. Salmon, D.V.M. 
(From the Breeders' Gazette.) 
There is no infectious disease with which we should be better 
acquainted than with the so-called Texas or Spanish fever of cat¬ 
tle. Its ravages have been known, and its peculiarities have been 
a subject of comment in the Northern States for the past ninety 
years; while it had existed in certain parts of the South for we 
know not how many centuries earlier. All the cattle taken to 
the infected districts of our Southern States to improve the native 
herds, or to introduce new breeds, have been subject to this 
affection from time immemorial, and the few which have survived 
became innured to it, just as a certain proportion of the foreign 
population of Havana becomes innured to the yellow feveiq 
With both of these diseases the immunity acquired in this way 
has been erroneously ascribed to acclimatization, while in reality 
it consists either in a natural insusceptibility to these affections, 
which a few individuals possess, or it is the result of a mild 
attack, which, with these, as with other infectious maladies, pro¬ 
tects against the peculiar virus in the future. 
Even the beef cattle shipped from Tennessee and the moun¬ 
tains of the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama, to certain market 
cities of the South, contract the plague in so short a time that it 
is nearly impossible, though it be winter, to get them slaughtered 
before the first symptoms appear ; while the number of times cat¬ 
tle from the South have infected the pastures of more northern 
latitudes, and destroyed the native stock upon them, has certainly 
been sufficient to demonstrate, to well-informed men, the danger¬ 
ous qualities of such animals. 
I state these facts, which are a matter of history, and of 
every-day observation in certain parts of our country, to recall 
the infinite importance of the subject and the necessity of our 
stock raisers having correct information, and of keeping it before 
them, in order that at least a part of the enormous losses may be 
arrested, which are now of annual occurrence. From time to 
