On the cattle plague Part 1

On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, desc.

by Honore Bourguignon.

PREFACE.

Nations, during the successive phases of their evolution on the globe, in which they advance from a state of infancy and barbarism to one of virility and civilization, from civilization to decadence or senility; and from decadence to their final extinction, are liable to numberless calamities.

These calamities are produced by moral causes, and are then called social Revolutions; and in other instances from physical causes, and then they are termed Cataclysms, Epidemics, or Epizootics.

In these crises, the initiative and devotion of individuals, the public administration, and the application of knowledge acquired in the Arts and Sciences, afford collectively an infallible criterion for ascertaining the position which a nation occupies in the scale of civilization, and the value of its religious, social, and political inst.i.tutions.

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.

No branch of human knowledge has been more rudely tested during the present epizootic than medical science. Many persons have been astounded at its helplessness; but if they had reflected at what a distance medicine has to follow in the wake of the exact sciences by which it is furnished with instruments for prosecuting its researches,--that organic chemistry progresses but slowly,--that the Cattle Plague was entirely unknown to the present generation of medical men in England,--and that the means for its scientific and practical study have been therefore wholly wanting, they would have been less surprised to find that it is as difficult to cure the Cattle Plague as it, is to cure phthisis, cancer, hydrophobia, and the cholera, against which medicine but too often is of little avail.

In times of great national calamity it behoves every one to contribute in proportion to his talents, fortune, or abilities, to alleviate the effects of the common misfortune. The poor man's mite, and the honest intention of the most insignificant, when added to the budget of common efforts, have their relative value; and it is for these reasons that I have published the following monograph on the Cattle Plague.

If it a.s.sists in any way to the extinction of the present epizootic, or if it serve to point out the necessity of combining the study of comparative pathology with that of medicine, I shall feel that I have contributed something which may favour my claim to be enrolled among the citizens of England.

This book, as may easily be seen, was originally written in my native language. A few kind and obliging friends--more particularly Mr. Taylor Sinnett, Drs. Clapton and Gervis, of St. Thomas's Hospital, and Mr.

Berridge, of the British Museum--have rendered me the greatest a.s.sistance in the translation. Without the guidance of such competent auxiliaries I could not have performed my arduous task.

I therefore beg to return to those gentlemen, and to all those who have a.s.sisted me on this occasion, my sincerest and most grateful thanks.

H. B.

INTRODUCTION.

Everyone is talking of the CATTLE PLAGUE! But why should we borrow this sinister and gloomy denomination from the middle ages and from the people's vocabulary? Is this, then, an unknown and incurable disease? Is this the first time that it has made its appearance on the soil of Great Britain? To judge by the manner in which the diffusion of this complaint has been met, accounted for, explained, and discussed, one might imagine it was so; and yet the mere observation of its causes, its symptoms, and its signs and effects on the bodies of the diseased animals, besides a few references to the medical library, would easily have testified that nature did not wait until the second half of the 19th century to generate a new distemper. No! Nothing new has appeared for a long time in the worlds of s.p.a.ce. The cosmic phenomena pursue their perpetual course, and the organic phenomena, _a fortiori_, do the same. Life, throughout the whole range of the animal kingdom, whatever may be its changes and fluctuations, submits to the fixed and invariable laws which hold dominion over health and disease. Our presumption and ignorance alone can account for the astonishment we manifest, not only when we witness great general calamities, but even when we look upon those simple morbid derangements which organic matter, both animal and vegetable, is continually undergoing on the globe, in the natural progress of destruction and dissolution.

The habit we most of us have contracted of confining our observations to the phenomena which strike our eyes, instead of fixing them on the general causes by which these phenomena have been produced; the forgetfulness of some, in others the want of acquaintance with general and comparative pathology, have in this instance led many conscientious inquirers to misapprehend both the nature and the treatment of the cattle complaint. It is in vain that we have subdivided and cla.s.sed medical science--in vain that we have arbitrarily inst.i.tuted a veterinary medicine and a human medicine; nature, in her acts, has no such subtleties. With nature, organic matter is organic matter, life is life; and although it may be true that both organic matter and life become more complex, and continue to rise in perfection till they reach man, it is quite as true that the laws of pathology and physiology are the same in all, and that it is just as difficult to cure the typhus of the ox as that of man. As, therefore, it is because we overlooked these fundamental truths, that the outbreak of the cattle distemper found us unprepared, we must treat the subject with all the gravity which is its due.

Let it not, however, be feared that the special fact of the _so-called_ Cattle Plague will be lost sight of amidst a crowd of scientific generalities. No; collateral reflections, seemingly foreign to the main argument, will concur to elucidate it; and all these rays of light will converge to a common centre, reflecting, we flatter ourselves, some evident facts and practical truths.

This work on the contagious typhus of the ox is divided into four princ.i.p.al parts.

The first part contains the history of this typhus from the remotest times down to the present day. It is divided into several sections.

The second part, which gives the description of the disease, is subdivided into four chapters.

The first chapter treats of general typhus, in order that a perfect understanding may be arrived at as to the name and definition of the particular distemper which affects the ox.

The second relates to the causes and origin of the disease.

The third treats of its symptoms, its progress, &c.

The fourth contains its mode of treatment.

The third part gives some plain instructions for the benefit of farmers, cattle-dealers, and dairymen.

The fourth part gives a development of the scientific means and safeguards to be adopted, in order that this country shall never relapse into that state of helpless panic to which a want of preparation exposed it when the present epizootia began its ravages.

FIRST PART.

_The History of the Contagious Typhus of the Ox, from the remotest times down to the present day._

I.

General, local, and particular causes of destruction are constantly reacting on organized creatures, and these causes account for those _epiphytic_ diseases which infest plants, the _epizootic_ diseases which spread mortality among the brute creation, and the _epidemic_, which strike and are fatal to the human species. Thus it is that we particularize at present, in the vegetable kingdom, the disease which has attacked the vines, olive-trees, and potatoes; in the animal kingdom, the silkworm sickness, and the cholera, and the typhoid fever of cattle: so that we may safely say, that one or other of these diseases is always, at a given moment, raging in some part of the globe among some species of animal, either birds, pigs, horses, sheep, horned cattle, or, in fine, attacks man himself.

When, however, the peccant invasion falls only on the vegetables and animals situated at our antipodes, we seldom hear of the ravages it commits; and when we do, forgetful of the affinity which links together all the organic beings on the earth and their mutual dependence, nothing can exceed the indifference we show to these calamities. Then, when the danger threatens us nearer home, or when the evil has invaded us, we have recourse to quarantine as the grand preservative to shield us. But this preservative remedy is most frequently deceptive--a mere illusion; for the real plague, typhus and cholera, borne along by the winds of heaven, pa.s.s over the longest distances and the highest obstacles, and baffle all our calculations; teaching us, by their successive returns, that we shall continually be exposed to their destructive havoc so long as we neglect to eradicate the evil at its original source, that is, in those countries from which it emanates.

And this is the place to observe, that the cholera morbus threatens to keep a permanent footing in the English possessions of India, because the public works, by means of which the great rivers used to be confined to their beds, have not of late been repaired and kept in good order in those countries; owing to which neglect, their waters overflow the plains, leaving, when they subside, those pestilential deposits which afford a perpetual incubation to the cholera.

We are induced to dwell thus on the general causes of these diseases, because the sick plants, on which dumb animals feed, and the sick animals, on which man himself feeds, have a continual relation of cause and effect; and we shall have to refer to this subject and give it weight, when we come to speak of the treatment of these diseases.

It is an important fact, which deserves our most pointed attention and consideration, that the vital resistance inherent in the animal frame to withstand the attacks of these contagious diseases, is very far from being the same throughout the whole kind. Man, in this respect, is the most favoured and best fortified; he is able, without much degenerating, to inhabit any lat.i.tude, to go with a sort of impunity, if his calling require him to do so, amidst the most pestilential emanations, and to continue for hours inhaling their baneful fumes. We could quote many striking examples of this resisting power in man. But there is one which we have recently witnessed, and which all can appreciate. 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; no other could breathe for hours, and day after day, like these workmen, an atmosphere so charged with decomposing impurities.

We say, therefore, that man may expose himself, with less danger to his life than any other animal, to those pernicious causes which produce and develop contagious diseases. Next to him, with respect to this power of vital resistance, come the omnivorous animals, then the carnivorous, and last of all, the herbivorous, in which this faculty is very feeble indeed.

This prime consideration, to be fully understood and appreciated by unscientific readers, would require explanations beyond the scope of this work. Let us, however, for the present establish the fact, that herbivorous animals, such as sheep and horned cattle, offer but a very weak resistance to the causes which generate infectious and epizootic diseases, and let us do our best to prove it by demonstration; for if this truth be once admitted, we shall therefrom deduce that it is the duty of man constantly to surround these frail and delicate creatures with special care and attention, if he wishes to prevent their being decimated from time to time, and if he would likewise avoid the consequent injuries to himself--the loss of health and money accruing from this deterioration.

So long as the herbivorous or gra.s.s-eating animal is properly fed; so long as he browses on fat pastures; so long as his blood retains those physiological elements which are the prime condition of health, he can, and does, resist the causes of most contagious maladies. But if a hot summer and a long continuance of dry weather chance to curtail, in temperate zones, the usual abundance of his fodder, then comes the fatal change: the blood is impoverished, the secretions are debilitated, a strange languor runs through the system, the vital resistance is unnerved, and he becomes an easy prey to those noxious influences which were encountered before without injury whilst his provision was abundant.

This is a fundamental matter. 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 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. A flock of fleecy animals, wasted by deficient food in dry and parched meadows, becomes attacked in due time by a parasitical cutaneous disease, known as the _itch_, which is enough, if not checked, to destroy the whole.

Now, all that is required is to remove this flock to a more fertile soil, where there is plenty to feed them, and the disease will disappear of itself without any treatment. Deficiency of food destroys the health of animals, and abundance of food overcomes disease in them.

A sheep affected by this parasitical disease may, without any fear, be placed in a flock of healthy sheep, for he will not propagate the distemper; but if instead of being sound and healthy, the flock is in a weak declining state, this contaminated animal will diffuse the disease with frightful rapidity, and may cause their entire destruction. These facts may seem startling, but we are only speaking after the incontestable authority of experiments.

We selected six healthy sheep, which we kept well supplied with provisions; we covered these healthy sheep with parasites (acari). On every one of these sound, well-fed sheep, the microscopic animalculae died off without generating the cutaneous disease; for the blood, the humours, and the skin of sound and healthy sheep const.i.tute a soil unfavourable to the propagation of these parasites, and actually starve them to death.

After this first experiment, we subjected these six sheep to a deficient diet; they grew lean, their blood was impoverished, and then all we had to do was to lay upon them not thousands and thousands of these parasites--as we had done in the first instance--but one solitary female in a state of fecundity; and the parasitical distemper unfolded itself so fiercely as to cause the death of three of these sheep on which the test was allowed to run its course; whilst the other three sheep, having been restored in time to a recoverable condition just as they were about to drop off, were thoroughly cured, without any special treatment, by the sole influence of good food and ordinary hygienic attention.

Other tests, similar to these experiments, were applied to dogs, horses, and horned cattle. A lean and scraggy dog, covered with parasites and eruptions, with eyes running foul humour, a dog which could neither run nor stand, and which was reduced to the last stage of wasting marasmus, was rescued from the jaws of death and thoroughly cured without special treatment, by the sole influence of a rich restorative diet. This dog afterwards became a fine hunting hound, beautiful in shape, and admirable for his sportive attributes.