1 Mar., 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 221 
Tick Fever. 
Rerernrine to and enclosing extract from an article on the important subject 
of tick fever, Dr.S. J. Richards, M.B., Ch.M., Mount Morgan, writes as follows 
to the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin :—I forward you herewith copy of the 
last British Medical Journal to hand, containing an interesting account of the 
investigations by two Italian scientists into the disease known to us in Australia 
as tick fever. 
From the extract the disease is apparently not associated in Italy with the 
cattle tick. Possibly there the mosquito serves as in (human) malaria as the 
means of propagation of the internal parasite. And the direct statement that 
the native cattle are immune should afford us the greatest hope for the future 
of our pastoral industry. 
The authors refer to the presence of the Pyrosoma within the red blood 
corpuscles. This I have not yet observed in the specimens of blood kindly 
forwarded me by Mr. Archer, of Gracemere, lately. I found the Pyrosoma in 
pairs and also singly; and varying in size from 6 diameters of a red blood 
corpuscle to the minutest dot discernable with {5 inch oil immersion. 
The communicability of tick fever by other means than the cattle tick 
would show the futility of relying, in a country inhabited by so many suctorial 
insects as Australia, upon quarantine as an efficient agent in checking the spread 
of the disease. It should, however, further stimulate careful judicious inocu- 
lation, which is on a par with the latest developments in bacteriological science. 
I suggested some months ago, to a gentleman deeply interested. in the 
subject, the use of quinine as a curative agent; but I have not heard from him 
since. I note that the Italian observers mention that “the disease is most 
favourably influenced by quinine.” Let someone here give it a good trial and 
ublish his results. 
The following is the extract from the British Medical Journal of the 25th 
of December, 1897, mentioned by Dr. Richards :— 
“ Celli and Santori (Centralb. f. Bakt., 1897, Nos. 15 and 16) report their 
investigations on a disease which attacks foreign cattle living in the Campagna, 
~ but spares those indigenous to the district. It is characterised by fever, great 
anemia, an enlarged spleen, and bloody urine, and is very frequently fatal. 
The authors found in the red blood corpuscles of animals affected by and dead 
of the disease a small body assuming two types, according to whether its 
movements were ameeboid or from place to place in the corpuscle. Culture 
experiments failed, but on one occasion they succeeded in inoculating a healthy 
calf with the disease, and in demonstrating the foreign bodies in the biood 
during its continuance. hey consider the bodies to be endocorpuscular 
parasites; they are oceasionally pear-shaped, and may be double, whence 
Smith, of Texas, has given the name of Pyrosoma bigeminum to one of the 
stages in their as yet incompletely studied developmental history. Although 
in some severe cases the disease is accompanied by hemoglobinuria, this is not 
a constant concomitant nor even a frequent one, so that the name of cattle 
hemoglobinuria or hematinuria does not afford a characteristic definition. A 
rapid and certain diagnosis can, however, be made by the examination of the 
blood, whereby cases can also be detected which would otherwise escape. 
observation. ‘The disease appears to be identical with that described by Babes 
in Roumania as cattle hemoglobinuria; by Smith and others as Texas fever ; 
by Krogius in Finland as hemoglobinuria; and by Sanfelice and Loi in 
Sardinia as hematinuria. When one considers the above-mentioned clinical 
characters, together with the characteristics of the parasite, the post-mortem 
appearances, the communicability from one animal to another of the same 
kind and race, and the further circumstances that the disease develops only 
in malarial neighbourhoods and seasons, and is most favourably influenced by 
quinine, its resemblance to human. malaria is seen to be very marked. The 
authors propose, therefore, that it be henceforth known as cattle malaria.” 
