Cattle plague

“ Plumbly's death was caused by the cattle plague, the borough coroner (R. Ransom, Esq.) directed a post-mortem examination to be made. But, by this time, so rapid was the spread of the virus through the system that the body appeared perfectly plague-stricken, and by Tuesday morning, when the surgeons arrived to examine it, and it was taken out of the coffin, the corpse scarcely retained the semblance of a human being, the head and trunk being much swollen and black in colour, the features quite undistinguishable, and all the flesh converted into a putrid jelly-like mass. ”

“ Glanders, for instance, so virulent with the horse, the ass, and man, produce in the case of the dog only a local accident; peripneumonia, so contagious among horned cattle, is more benign in its action on Dutch than other breeds of stock; the cattle plague that decimates so many farms is communicated by cattle to each other from the slightest contact, while the closest and most constant association is necessary to communicate the disease to sheep, and even when they are affected its action is not severe. ”

“ The cattle plague, which is creating so much anxiety throughout the Eastern States, is a contagious fever, affecting cows chiefly, characterized by extensive exudations into the respiratory organs, and attended by a low typhus inflammation of the lungs, pluræ, and bronchia. ”

“ A source of fallacy rests in the prevalence of cattle plague in the district and the possibility of infection through unsuspected channels, before the recognized exposure. Something must also be allowed for the greater susceptibility and the larger dose of the poison which would tend to shorten the incubation. Thus the western improved breeds, which suffer a mortality of 80 to 95 per cent. (Refik Bey) , and the winter season, when the virus is concentrated in small ill ventilated houses, both tend to shorten the incubation. ”

“ Every beast which dies of the contagious typhus, bears on its digestive organs the traces of the malady, more or less strongly marked. The third and fourth stomachs and the intestines exhibit red or livid patches, and at other times ulcerations.
The cattle plague is by far the most formidable malady which can affect animals. When left to itself, or treated without discernment, it carries off ninety cattle out of a hundred. ”

“ As the most rapidly developing and deadly of the cattle plagues, this attracted the greatest attention of people in earlier times, and thus its invasions and ravages can be more satisfactorily identified, than those of the tardier and somewhat less deadly lung plague which usually followed in its wake. ”

“ Scotland.—The cattle plague has travelled North to Aberdeenshire, and has killed a number of animals almost simultaneously on three farms at many miles distance from one another. The owners of stock in one of the districts, and the Royal Northern Agricultural Association, are taking, or resolving to take, sharp and prompt steps to stay the progress of the disease. ”

“ Their wants [Pg 351] are not great, and their worldly luxuries, beyond potatoes and schnaps, are bought with the profits made on large herds of cattle. One herd only had suffered from the cattle plague when we visited the village. This herd consisted of 1225 animals, divided into three lots. The affected portion numbered 450 animals—bullocks intended for work and slaughter—varying in age from three to seven years. The cows and heifers had not been smitten. The 450 animals amongst which the disease appeared were housed in no less than sixteen different sheds in Nickolsdorf. ”

“ During the first half of the nineteenth century, cattle plague, pleuro-pneumonia, and foot-and-mouth disease were particularly disastrous to the animal industry of the Continent of Europe, and unquestionably, also, throughout Asia, which appears to have been the original habitat of these plagues. ”

“ The therapeutic treatment of cattle affected with cattle plague has been eminently unsatisfactory and is so certain to become a means of extension of the disease that it is legally prohibited in all countries, in which the plague has not been allowed to become generally diffused. ”

“ The damage done by tuberculosis contagious disease of cattle, transmissible to other animals and to man by means of the milk and flesh of diseased beasts—cannot be even guessed at; but it must be enormous considering how widely this malady is diffused. But that terrible pest of all ages, cattle plague, has been promptly suppressed in England with comparatively trifling loss. Foot-and-mouth disease, which frequently proved a heavy infliction to agriculture, has been completely extirpated. Rabies may now be included, with rinderpest, lung plague and sheep-pox, in the category of extinct diseases ”

“ The case is also more important from having occurred in a place no less than fourteen miles distant from any other where the cattle plague exists, thus placing beyond a doubt the fact of the malady being introduced among the cattle by the sheep alone. ”

“ During the outbreak of cattle plague in 1866, in sheds containing twenty to thirty cows—which the owners kept closed to such an extent that all chinks in the doors and windows were stuffed with straw and matting, under an ignorant belief that thus the plague could be kept out—very frequently the entire stock died in two or three days after the first appearance of disease ”

“ The germs, the miasmata of the disease, insinuate themselves not only upon animals and men, but they shed their virus upon the grass of the fields, the walls of the stalls and stables, and every agricultural utensil. Every tainted animal scatters the pestilential and contagious germs, not only by the air he expires, but by his droppings, and after death by his mortal remains—his hide, his horns, his entrails, his flesh—all of which disseminate the deadly germs into the atmosphere, which afterwards diffuses them in every direction. ”

“ We refer to the slaughter-house of the great Metropolitan Market. Here we saw, in lumps and fragments, every variety of corrupt detritus of animals which had been seized with the contagious typhus; we saw the animals, too, being felled and slaughtered and dissected, in a high temperature which rendered the air so poisonous that we could hardly breathe it; yet amidst all this infection the workmen employed to move and handle these revolting wrecks appeared indifferent to the scene, and quite in their usual health. No living animal besides man could stand such a trial ”

“ It is doubtful, too, whether or not the removal of diseased cattle from our midst by burial only, is sufficient to stamp out a very virulent plague. I find that during the great plague of 1865, in Great Britain alone 132,000 cattle were attacked ”

“ Great Britain has applied both quarantine and slaughter for many years, and in an outbreak near Dublin in 1912 measures were adopted which were even more stringent than any that have been used in the United States. A British official (Cope) asserted in 1899 that after his country's experience with this disease it was "more dreaded by the farmers and stock raisers of Great Britain than cattle plague or pleuropneumonia, and they are now willing and ready to put up with any restrictions, of however drastic a character, considered necessary by the central department to stamp it out." ”

“ A second cow was attacked on the 11th of September, and a third shortly afterwards, which was followed by others; so that by the 16th all the cows, six in number, a heifer, and a calf, were all dead.
"My examination of the lambs showed that they were unmistakably the subjects of the plague. The symptoms agreed in almost every particular with those observed in cattle affected with the malady, and the post-mortem appearances were also identical. ”

“ Like every watchful physician who has applied himself to the study of comparative pathology, we entertained our own preconceived opinions as to the nature of this Cattle Plague. Arguing à priori from what we knew, from the laws of the pathogenia of those exanthematic diseases which we have alluded to in a former chapter; from the identity of variola in various animals; from the preventive treatment to which this identity has led; believing that animals and man have each their typhoid fever, as they have their variola or small-pox ”

“ Calamities always leave behind them disasters and victims, but they bequeath also a precious legacy. Nations which are called upon for fresh and progressive efforts, find in the experience they have gained a new source of strength and means of future greatness. I am convinced that this will be the case with England; though, helpless for the moment, and unable to stay the Cattle Plague which now ravages her entire extent, she will in future be found better prepared to resist the inroads of such a direful enemy. ”

“ Most things can wait for the call, assembling and action of a legislature; the infection of cattle plague can not. Such laws are not superfluous. If never called for they still show a wise provision against a terrible, though remote, possibility; if really called for and they are not found ready, the great cattle industry and even the agriculture of the continent may be largely sacrificed by the neglect. ”

“ Cattermole, George, artist, born in Norfolk; illustrated Britton's “English Cathedrals,” “Waverley Novels,” and the “Historical Annual” by his brother; painted mostly in water-colour; his subjects chiefly from English history (1800-1868) .
Cattle Plague, or Rinderpest, a disease which affects ruminants, but especially bovine cattle; indigenous to the East, Russia, Persia, India, and China, and imported into Britain only by contagion of some kind; the most serious outbreaks were in 1865 and 1872. ”

“ We therefore beg leave to support and justify our argument by borrowing some additional evidence from prior labours of ours, accomplished at the Ecole d'Alfort, near Paris, conjointly with Professor Delafond, whose name has so often been cited in the public journals in connexion with the cattle plague.
All vegetables and animals; with the exception of adult men, whenever their health [Pg 11] declines from any cause (but more particularly from paucity of food) , spontaneously generate microscopic parasites, or very minute insects, the germs of which are inherent in their system. ”

“ Wasting advances rapidly, abortion occurs in pregnant females, the weakness becomes extreme, the animal remains constantly down, unable to rise, rests his head on the ground, breathes heavily and stertorously and perishes with or without convulsions.
635Diagnosis in Cattle. Individual symptoms of cattle plague may be found in other diseases, but the aggregate symptoms, in a rapidly spreading and fatal affection, and connected with a previous prevalence of the disease in the country or district, or distinct evidence of the introduction of infection should in every case obviate error. ”

“ You may compare this disease, in order to form a more precise idea of it, to the small-pox, which sometimes afflicts your children, or to typhoid fever. These complaints, which are familiar to most of you, have some resemblance to the typhus of the ox. Only in the small-pox, which is caught by contagion, and which seldom attacks more than once, like typhus, the disease is localized [Pg 283] on the skin; whilst in the cattle plague the internal organs are the principal seat of the evil. ”

“ The district veterinary surgeon in constant attendance was an extremely active and intelligent man, who recognised the disease on its first outbreak, and adopted such measures for separation, destruction, and burial, as prevented the disease from spreading so rapidly as it has in England.
The cause of the outbreak was the intermingling of cattle-dealers' stock with the Nickolsdorf herd; and although the animals which carried it have not been fully traced, they are believed to have been owned by a butcher who had purchased them in Comorn, where the malady is raging. ”

“ It may be as well to state that quarantine regulations, which have been regarded as almost useless in the prevention of human disorders, from the great difficulties in the way of carrying them out efficiently, are recognised as of great value in controlling the propagation of cattle plagues. It is possible to control the movement of herds, and the governments of Central Europe have found it absolutely essential so to do. ”

“ The permanence of infection in and around large cities is largely due to the common pasturage by different herds in succession on the same unfenced lots waiting to be purchased for building. For this reason the plague always extended in summer when the cattle frequented these lots, and diminished in winter when they were strictly confined to stables and yards. ”

“ For if, like certain system-mongers, we reduced the treatment of all tainted cattle to the same mathematical formula of medication, that is, either to bleeding or to purging exclusively, [Pg 244] we should certainly increase the number of victims.
In this stage of the disease we have to contend with the derangements of the circulation and secretions. The fever is generally intense, the blood is inflamed or vitiated, the mucous membranes are dried up; shiverings, alternations of cold and heat, &c., occur. We must then mitigate these morbid phenomena either by bleeding or purging. ”

“ The look and posture of this cow, her excited yet terrified glance as she surveyed this scene of carnage, was one of those pictures which no pencil could draw; and although we acknowledge that man possesses an incontestable right to apply to his own use the dead or live matter of animals for his food and sustenance, we could not help feeling for the poor victim, slipping over the blood, and thus scenting death before receiving the stroke. ”