Reports on the diseases of cattle in the United States made to the Commissioner of Agriculture, with accompanying documents. / Department of Agriculture.

  • United States. Department of Agriculture.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports on the diseases of cattle in the United States made to the Commissioner of Agriculture, with accompanying documents. / Department of Agriculture. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    169/206 (page 163)
    ferred by its inoculatiou under iiivorable circuinstauces, to liealtliy people, and indeed to all warm-blooded creatnres; but there are indigenous mal- adies, somewhat allied to the splenic fever of cattle, developed under like conditions, and capable of moderate extension from the districts where they originate spontaneously. But the cattle iu the south are affected with a maladythatisnot inoculable, that is not propagated by the bites of insects and by the transference of decomposed or poisoned blood and tissues into the structures of healthy men or animals, and manifests in its methodof propagation more of the features of cholera than of other prop- erly recorded malady. It does not belong to the group of epizootics proper, or contagious diseases like ])leiu'0-pneumonia, rinderpest, and the varied forms of variola. It is not an infectious disease; and the single observa- tion reported by the New York commissioners cannot outweigh the lum- di-eds we have observed and carefully traced, and which indicate that the cattle are not discharging, by their breath or skin, into the air around them, the jn-inciples capable of perpetuating the malady. The plagues proper spread regardless of soil, climate, food, geological formation, altitude, &c., wherever sick animals approach or touch healthy oues. Splenic fever is not communicated by a cow to its calf, and is absolutely stopped by a fence, unless some accident leads to the mingling together of the southern animals with others they are capable of injimug. The malady, engendered with peculiar virulence iu western or eastern cattle, is not, unless exceptionally—and no properly attested exception has come to my knowledge—communicated by these to other amimals that have not traversed the trails of Texan and other southern herds. It is a nft>dification, a poisoning of the food and possibly of the water tainted by the manure of the southern cattle, whereby the malady is transmitted. It is thus with human cholera. I do not msh it to be understood that splenic fever is at aU allied to cholera beyond the peculiar and ordinary method of propagation from certain centers. We know nothing of the spontaneous development of cholera and the centers whence it springs. We can witness the independent and primary production of the Texas or Florida fever by transporting western or eastern cattle to the south, where, fed on the pastures apart from other animals, they con- tract the disease and die. Annually the Texan steers suffer, so far as my observations on cattle of all ages go, from this same local influence, which, in their acclimatized systems, does not usually lead to death. There is doubtless something tangible and ponderable, which some future chemist may reveal, that ren- ders the grasses, and maybe the waters, of the south so deleterious. Tlie disease, therefore, to which the third of the annexed reports refers, is an indigenous or enzootic malady, susceptible of moderate extension by the manner in which the grasses of healthy regions are modified by the manure scattered broadcast from the systems of southern herds. It is not a contagious plague, and will probably cease when the agriculture of the south is faiily and fully developed.