in its symptoms, and in its gravity. We believe that these three visitations constitute but one and the same malady, occurring at three different periods. This appears to us a most important fact, for if such be the case, the tentative treatment of that time deserves our most particular attention. Consequently, a few retrospective glances may perhaps be permitted us, in considering the subject of cattle disease.
The medical professors (including several English physicians), who observed and described the epizootia of 1745, divided the same into three periods.
The duration of the disease, when it passed through all its phases up to the death of the affected animal, consisting of from ten to twelve days, they usually ascribed to each of these periods or stages an average continuance of three or four days.
1st Period.– After a few days of latent incubation, which the observer could not suspect, the sick animal betrayed signs of the morbid state which was about to declare itself, by his careless feeding, by drooping his head, and by exhibiting the deepest dejection of spirits in his attitude and look. Rumination, already imperfect, soon ceased altogether, the appetite failed, the horns, ears, and hoofs were cold, the hair grew stiff, the tongue and mucus looked white; the eyes were tearful and fixed, the hearing obtuse, whilst, in the cows, the supply of milk diminished. In cases of unusual gravity, transient shiverings testified to a serious disturbance in all the animal functions. These shiverings were followed by a violent fever, the blood became inflamed, the breath hot, the respiration hurried and sometimes attended with slight coughing; when, if too violent a repercussion was transmitted to the nervous centres, the pressure on the vertebral line became intolerable, and the animal, seized with vertigo, and almost delirious with pain, would fall during this first period, as if struck by lightning.
The same phenomena are sometimes observed in the typhoid fever of man, which offers moreover some analogy with the contagious typhus of the ox; but as the ox and the horse have likewise the real typhus fever, they may some day supply us with the preventive virus for that fever, in the same manner as the cow now supplies us with the preventive virus for the small-pox.
2nd Period.– In most cases the disease pursued its course with greater or less regularity; the sick animal experienced gnawing pains or twitchings, and spasmodic shootings in the limbs, apparently attended with pain. His thirst was insatiable, but he had no appetite, the functions of the bladder and intestines were impeded, then diarrhœa supervened, accompanied with dry, fetid, and sometimes bloody excreta. Thick viscid mucosities dripped from the nostrils, mouth, and eyes. The dorsal regions and the loins were constantly aching, headache and sleeplessness were permanent. The animal continued either standing or lying down, and if he wanted to rest, he could not bend himself gradually, but would fall like an inert mass to the ground.
3rd Period.– Diarrhœa was continual, becoming more fetid every day, the wasting of flesh made rapid strides; the cellular tissue beneath the hide was filled with gas along the vertebral channels and under the abdomen; the nostrils were stopped up with mucosities, the animal could only breathe through the mouth, puffing and blowing aloud as he drew in the air; and at last pustular eruptions showed themselves on various parts; but as this depurating crisis was insufficient, the poor beast, in this final period of the attack, fell a sacrifice to it between the seventh and twelfth day. If he chanced to be lying down his agony was slow, but if standing, he would sink upon himself, and expire at once.
In this dreadful epizootia, very few of the smitten cattle survived – not more than four or five in a hundred; and in these favourable cases, the symptoms presented certain signs and critical phenomena of a happy omen. In these rare exceptions, the pulse did not exceed seventy, the beatings of the heart were always perceptible, the patient did not refuse to drink, the continuous fever exhibited no aggravation at night, pustular eruptions and tumours appeared on the dewlap and the fore limbs, and the epidermis over the mouth and nostrils peeled off about the twelfth day.
When dissected, the bodies offered to view the following alterations, the same having already been observed by Frascator during the prevalence of the epizootia in 1514, and by Lancisi and Ramazzini during that which was so fatal in 1711. The mucous glands of the mouth were livid, and occasionally excoriated; the bronchial tubes were obstructed with mucosities; the lungs, besides being partially congested, were sometimes emphysematous, that is, inflated with compressed air. Of the four stomachs, the rumen was full of food, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum exhibited purple or livid spots, according to their place. The thin intestine and the thick intestine showed either a general injection, scattered livid spots, or ulcerations, according as the fever had worn the exanthematous or typhoid form; for the mucous membrane of the digestive channels, and especially that of the intestines, displays, like the external tegument in man and the brute creation, divers forms of inflammation, analogous with the measles, the scarlatina, and the small-pox; so that, if the typhoid fever in man, which is nothing else than the small-pox of the intestines, is so frequently cured, it is because the general morbid condition, the fever, often conceals different intestinal lesions, albeit they seem to be similar in the general symptoms, which taken collectively constitute the disease.
The flesh of these diseased animals was blackish, and devoid of blood; the animals which fed upon it, if uncooked, sickened afterwards, or died. The wrecks of the bodies, and more particularly the skin, sometimes retained a strength of contagion so deadly, that the mere exportation of them was enough to cause its propagation, and to this cause was at that time attributed the outbreak of the contagion in England.
An extraordinary case of this pernicious influence, which is related by Hartmann, who observed this epizootia at its decline in 1756, will give an idea of the subtlety of this malignant virus.
A farmer who had lost an ox in consequence of that virulent distemper, buried it in one of his fields. The following night a bear smelt the ox, raked it up with his feet, ate a portion of the flesh, and a few days after, the beast of prey was found dead in a neighbouring wood by a peasant in the parish of Eumaki. The skin belonging to this bear was magnificent. The peasant flayed the animal and carried home his skin in triumph. But his triumph was short; for that same night the poor countryman fell ill, and died two days after the attack. The magistrates of Wiburg, having heard of this occurrence, sent orders to have the infected skin burned. Meanwhile, the skin had been given to the curate of the place as a compensation for the offices of burial; but his cupidity having persuaded him that this fine skin could not have destroyed the peasant whom he had just buried, he did not burn it at all, but induced another peasant to clean and dress it for him. This simple fellow and two other clodpoles, who assisted him in the preparation, fell ill, and all three of them died in the course of a few days. A new and peremptory order now came from Wiburg to burn this skin, to burn the house in which it had been dressed, to burn even the presbytery itself, should it be deemed necessary. The skin had already passed through several hands. However, the curate being still reluctant to part with it, took it home again. "Can it be possible," said he to himself, "that this skin has really proved fatal to life? What can have been the cause, I wonder?" At the same time he rubbed it in his hands and smelt it. Unlucky curate! A few days afterwards he himself was taken ill and died. (Memoirs of the Academy of Stockholm.)
A native of Clermont Ferrand, in the department of Puy de Dôme, in France, the birth-place of Pascal, one day finding an ox which had died of the epizootia, stripped off the skin and carried it away. After his return home, the black typhus, and then gangrene, broke out on one of his arms, which had to be cut off, and the patient died of the effects of the amputation.
A butcher having slaughtered an ox smitten with this typhus, sold the flesh for meat to some soldiers of the Regiment Royal Bavière, then garrisoned in one of the towns of Languedoc. All those who partook of this meat were seized with diarrhœa, dysentery, and fever, and several of the sick soldiers very nearly died. The butcher, whose avarice had caused all this mischief, had richly deserved some exemplary punishment, and some of the sufferers proposed that he should be hanged outright, but the majority, more clement, sentenced him to be beaten black and blue with horsewhips.
The
