220 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Mar., 1898. 
NOMENCLATURE. 
Considering the many particulars in which a resemblance or an analog 
is discoverable between tick fever and malaria; considering also that the 
bovine malady, like the human, is of wide distribution, limited, as Smith 
and Kilborne point out, by latitude rather than by continents; consider- 
ing, too, the confusion and inconvenience of having, for one and the same 
disease, a multiplicity of separate and distinct names which are, for the most 
part, meaningless or misleading, or have only a purely local or symptomatic 
significance*—one is tempted to inquire if some one general and appropriate 
name cannot be found. This is obviously a task for nosologists and etymo- 
logists, and would probably be easier to criticise than to accomplish. 
The Queensland popular name of “ tick fever,’ embodying as it does a dis- 
tinct etiological indication, is probably the best name yet introduced. But the tick 
does not necessarily carry the disease,} nor is the disease necessarily a fever.t 
The relationships which have been mentioned might, perhaps, at first glance, 
suggest the term “ bovine malaria,” but that is at once negatived as implying 
an etiological identity which does not by any means exist. We desire to 
connote a true relationship without suggesting a false identity. The latter 
necessity excludes such words as “malaria” and ‘ paludism,” which haye 
already another and quite well-defined meaning. We seem to need a word 
somewhat allied in significance to these, because—though they are both very 
much open to criticism on all grounds—they have the prestige of long and 
universal usage, and convey a very distinct pathological entity, correlation with 
which we desire to signify. ‘The word “palustrism” is perhaps rather’ 
cacophonous and barbarous in construction, but it might possibly meet our 
requirements, since it does not appear to have been—at any rate, so extensively— 
employed in the sense of “ malaria’’ and “ paludism,” and yet carries with it a 
suggestion of something the same general idea. If to such a word we added 
the generic term “ Ixodie,” to indicate the remote causative factor, we should 
have in the “ double-barrelled ”? name—“ ixodic palustrism”—a painful, but 
perhaps sufficiently descriptive, appellation. 
* The following are some of the names that have been applied to this disease :—Redwater, 
Texas Fever, Southern Cattle Fever, Yellow Fever, Splenic Fever, Southern Cattle Plague, 
Hemoglobinuric Fever, Spanish Fever, Red Murrain, Mexican Fever, &c., &c., &c. 
+ Many instances have been recorded where ticks have been present for many months 
. without producing any obvious disease—which, at least, suggests that some cattle ticks do not 
carry the specific micro-organism. 
t £.g., in its chronic forms. 
