On the cattle plague Part 8

However, the typhic miasma absorbed at the same time by the respiratory and digestive mucous membranes serves to modify the qualities of the blood, and secretly reacts on the nervous system; soon after, the animal exhibits more decidedly those changes which previously were hardly to be detected; his want of appet.i.te is more marked, his sadness more obvious, and his attention fixes itself more slowly and carelessly on the objects which surround him. When he is in the shed, his usual food is found in excess of his wants, his thirst is much keener and more frequent, and a continual dejection and lowness of spirits or a transitory agitation disturb all his functions. When the farmers or graziers notice these premonitory signs for the first time they pay but little attention thereto; but if the contagion has found its way into their stalls and sheds they are no longer deceived by them, but begin to apprehend that in a day or two fresh victims will be added to the number.

2. _Period of Initiation._--Soon the elaboration of the virulent miasma in the organic structure changes the quality of the blood and humours, the functions of a.s.similation and secretion are modified, the nervous centres receive vitiated organic elements and are disturbed in their physiological conditions, and the smitten animal displays that state of latent uneasiness which he is imperfectly conscious of by a general look of heaviness and stupor (??f??), which has suggested for this disease its name of typhus.

Indeed, the poor animal's eyes are fixed, the hearing becomes obtuse or indifferent, as may be seen in the sinking of the ears, those organs which are so sensitive, so contractile, and so vigilant in herbivorous animals. With the head hanging down and motionless, the neck stretched out, their forelegs open and spread, their b.u.t.tocks drawn together and one of them completely lax, they seem to succ.u.mb beneath the weight of their bodies. In a word, the animal exhibits through its whole bearing a heavy sadness, a general dejection, which bespeak a great derangement in the whole structure. From this time, in the animals which are most seriously affected, the appet.i.te ceases, the rumination becomes irregular and partial, whilst in some others the appet.i.te and rumination are maintained in different degrees.

But the incubation of the morbid elements pursues its course, the alteration of the blood becomes general, and the circulation is increased and quickened. After this the fever interposes and stops the secretions, that of the udders is dried up, the mucous channels cease to flow, the mucous membrane of the mouth becomes whitish, the little glands situated on it are more permanent, especially in the circ.u.mference of the gums; the floor of the tongue and the larynx are inflamed, the mucous membrane of the cow's s.e.xual organs is red and furrowed with livid streaks, the white of the eye is parched, and the skin feels alternately hot and cold, as well as the horns and hoofs.

Some of the sufferers have an external horripilation, transient shiverings are felt in the front and hind quarters and at the junction of the limbs with the trunk. Some pregnant cows near their delivery miscarry. In a word, at this period of irritation, the whole frame is at war with the typhic elements which besiege it, and which overcome the preservative power of the vital forces, and from this general disturbance arises an incandescent fever, which drains and stops all the secretions at their source.

These general symptoms are the first signs and warnings of functional derangements more significant, which may, however, vary according to the predispositions of each animal, and transfer their evolutions either to the nervous centres or to the respiratory mucous membrane, or to that of the digestive channels, in the inflammatory and febrile form of the contagious typhus. Such at least is what we observe in the typhus of 1865 in England.

The functional derangements, in truth, subordinate to and depending on the predispositions exhibited by the cattle, are far from being the same in all. In some, the nervous derangements predominate; in others, it is those of the respiratory, and in others, it is those of the digestive channels.

As in this period of irritation the nervous centres are more particularly affected, the animal suffers cerebral and rickety pains, a constant cephalalgia, which provokes vague anxiety; he is sometimes cheerful, sometimes wild and furious; he clenches his teeth and yawns, the muscles of his face spasmodically contract, the spine feels very sensitive when pressed, a burning and insatiable thirst comes on, the breathing is hurried, and the intestinal evacuations are suspended.

In this form the toxaemia appears to concentrate about the nervous centres--as is observed elsewhere at the outset of certain violent fevers, in the typhus and typhoid fever of man, for instance--and some of their number may perish the victims of these nervous disorders, and even fall as if struck with electricity. They die apparently from the result of the typhic poison; for at this second period, we do not trace in the nervous centres those injuries which might account for so sudden a death.

When the respiratory apparatus concentrates upon it the febrile congestion, the breathing becomes painful, accelerated, embarra.s.sed, sometimes convulsive, and a deep, oppressive cough is heard from time to time. The animal, under the yoke of this oppressive uneasiness, turns his head from right to left, scents, and seems to question his flanks, where the seat of the disorder is; and then, whether the pulmonary affection is congestive or inflammatory or emphysematous, he may die of the consequences of obstruction to the pulmonary circulation and from the alteration of the blood, under the influence of a slow asphyxia, but only at the third or fourth period.

Finally, when the typhus localizes more particularly its morbid phenomena on the digestive channels, we discern local alterations on the floor of the tongue and the buccal mucous membrane, spots of livid red, leaving behind them ulcerations of greater or less extent and depth on different parts of the intestinal ca.n.a.l. In this form, which follows more regularly all the periods, constipation is obstinate at the outset, evacuation of the bowels takes place with difficulty, the faeces are hard and the urine scanty, the belly is inflated and sensitive.

Sometimes at this period of initiation, one of these three symptomatic forms--the nervous, the pulmonary, and the digestive--may predominate exclusively, so far as to mask the disease as a whole, and to const.i.tute it a special malady. But in that case, it is only the exaggeration of the functional derangements which in their total const.i.tute the typhus: for when the distemper pursues its course, these three princ.i.p.al centres of life are always affected in different degrees. Thus, not one of the cattle smitten with the typhus goes through all the phases of the disease, without suffering at a given moment in its nervous, respiratory, and digestive functions.

In this respect, the typhus of the ox presents an apparent a.n.a.logy with the typhoid fever in man, although it is different. Consequently, the name of _typhus fever_ given by some veterinary surgeons, is not altogether inapplicable to it.

3. _Period of Duration._--At this stage of the disease, which may be said to extend from the fourth to the seventh day, the nervous derangements are confined to symptoms of uneasiness and sensibility along the dorsal spine; for those cases which exhibited more violent derangement in the nervous functions have proved fatal. In this period of the disease the breathing is more embarra.s.sed, particularly when the pulmonary form of the disease prevails. The pulse, which is hard and frequent, indicates from forty to sixty pulsations; the beatings of the heart are more violent and audible; the mucous membranes, dry at the outbreak, recover their secretions, but these latter are endowed with irritating properties. Thus the eyelids, swollen and tumefied at the edges beneath the lashes, drip with a corrosive liquid, which soon marks its furrow along the chanfrin; the bronchiae, the trachea, the nostrils, the salivary glands, exude a serosity which runs out of the nasal and buccal orifices. The exanthematic eruption having discharged itself through the digestive channels, constipation is followed by diarrhoea, rumination is completely stopped, the beast declines all solid nutriment, and pants for drinks,--for those especially which have a slight taste of acidity in them.

The derangements at this period pursue a rapid course--the breathing becomes more and more difficult, the skin is hot and dry, the hairs stiffen more and more, gases are developed in the cellular tissues beneath the skin, along the dorsal vertebrae, at the abdominal folds of the posterior limbs and under the abdomen, in the form of flat, uneven, crepitant tumours, which crackle when pressed with the hand; the diarrhoea becomes more liquefied and irritant, for then it is no longer a flow of droppings covered with mucus which is expelled, but secretions already putrid, sometimes reddish in colour, and attended with foetid gases, which induce tenesmus in the r.e.c.t.u.m, and force up the tail. The animal grows perceptibly lean, his dejection is extreme, and cows which are with calf miscarry.

At night, the animal seems to have an increase of fever, sometimes of a remittent type, after which he becomes drowsy and lies down to rest himself or to sleep, if he can; but the difficulty of breathing, the abdominal pains, soon force him to rise again, which he cannot do without an effort.

4. _Period of Decline and Sinking._--This stage is observed to extend from the eighth day to the twelfth or the fourteenth. The morbid functions pursue their course, for the disease has its regular phases and a successive variation of phenomena. The secretions, which a few days before were fluid and irritating, have undergone a change; they have become thick and purulent, they flow more slowly from the ocular mucous membranes, and also from the nasal and buccal, which are red and inflamed, and they already emit a foetid smell. The dull tarnished eyes become hollowed, purulent mucus lodges within their orbits, the bronchiae are stopped up, the breathing grows louder and more panting, the animal instinctively stretches his neck to ease it; the wasting of the flesh exposes the bones of the sacrum and coccyx, laying bare the vertebrae and the ribs; the emphysematous tumours are more extensive and crackling; the skin, less heated, wrinkles up and splits about the bony protuberances; the udders are crusty and excoriated; detached boils, hard and rounded at first, then soft and purulent, begin to show themselves on the trunk and the upper parts of the limbs. The diarrhoea, still frequent, becomes b.l.o.o.d.y and intolerably offensive.

At this final period the organic structure yields to the effects of a general alteration of the liquids and solids. The vital force has lost the power of reaction; a ma.s.s of blood, decomposed by the double influence of a virulent toxaemia and the obstructions of respiration, conveys to all the organs a principle of dissolution; the nervous system is in a manner paralysed, as is shown in the animal's insensibility.

The secretions stop up the various channels and cavities; they lodge within them; they undergo a putrid decomposition, and pa.s.s out with difficulty in the form of a purulent and b.l.o.o.d.y flux, in the highest degree infectious. Very soon the sick animal has ceased really to live; it struggles and labours with its agony; if the lungs are clogged with gas or fluid they rattle hurriedly and often; the animal cannot hold its head up even when lying down, and when standing moves it to and fro as if affected with the natural shaking of old age, and as if seeking to ward off some indescribable evil, the occurrence of which it was awaiting.

The animal's body is a prey given up beforehand to the laws of organic decomposition: the internal mucous membrane of the cheeks and lips peels off in strips when rubbed; the sores on the skin have a livid and gangrenous look; the eggs which the flies deposit on the edge of the eyelids and at the nasal orifices, or on the excoriations of the skin, quickly pa.s.s into the state of larvae. The air they expire is cold and infectious; the native caloric, extinguished in every focus successively, disappears; the v.a.g.i.n.al mucous membrane is tumefied, the a.n.a.l opening gapes, and from it flows a b.l.o.o.d.y and decomposed liquid which the r.e.c.t.u.m can no longer expel. The mouth, half open and coated with a thick glutinous foam, vainly tries to inhale long draughts of air which can no longer reach the lungs. Finally, if the animal is lying down, he expires in slow agony, his head borne down by its own weight; or, if standing, he sinks and falls down, his death having antic.i.p.ated the fall.

Such are the symptoms--the subjective signs which enable us to detect the contagious typhus of the ox. But all animals do not exhibit these disorders of the vital functions with the same regularity and excess.

Some of these we have seen, from first to last, sustain the internal effects of the morbid process--in some sort pa.s.sively--without revealing any deep derangements in the nervous, respiratory, and digestive functions. The poisonous virus had smitten them; they suffered in their general structure; they looked stupefied; they lost, at a given moment, their appet.i.te and rumination; they had fever; their breathing had become short and frequent; they had diarrhoea; they gradually lost flesh, and the excreta pa.s.sed through certain changes and transformations. In a word, the animal had manifestly the bovine typhus; but, thanks to a relative immunity, to a special organization, which renders some of these beasts capable of resisting the contagion for a long period, and sometimes altogether[O]--thanks to that variety which we observe in different const.i.tutions (for small-pox and typhus in man, and the true typhoid fever in animals, do not operate with the same violence on all alike)--thanks to this privileged organization,--we have seen some oxen pa.s.s through every stage of the disease without exhibiting this terrible train of morbid phenomena.

In these cases--for even this mild form of the distemper at last produces death--the injuries fix themselves more exclusively on the digestive channels, and we witness, in dissection, ulcerations in some, in others mere spots of a livid red, more or less extensive.

Finally, although the typhus be one of the gravest maladies which destroy and decimate cattle, all sick animals are not mortally affected thereby. In the present epizootia, five per cent., as nearly as can be ascertained, recover; and when that happens, signs of a favourable omen are observable during the course of the attack. In these favourable instances, indeed, the symptoms, even though they exhibit a certain gravity, pursue a regular course; fever does not become remittent; the faecal discharge is copious and easy, with less foetor; the animal loses flesh slowly and progressively; the tumours are cutaneous, inflammatory; their character is good, depurative, and rather purulent than gaseous and crackling. The droppings do not show that high degree of pestilential decomposition described above; the animal in his drink welcomes and digests a mixture of bran and flour; the secretions of purulent mucus and the faecal discharges dry up and stop in the early part of the period of decline; the epidermis of the openings through which they pa.s.sed out peels off in thin scales, and afterwards in scurfs or husks--in a word, the economy does not experience those acute disturbances which strike one of the tripods of life--that is to say, either the nervous centres, the lungs, or the digestive organs.

Now, in these curable cases, in which the cure is most generally due to nature's own efforts, but which a systematic treatment might render far more frequent, the convalescence is long, and requires great attention and a well-regulated diet, in which the food is carefully measured and divided. Here there must be a rigid superintendence. A laxity in the watchfulness, or too much reliance on the reviving health, have produced sudden relapses, and been fatal to many sick cattle, which had been looked upon as thoroughly cured. For it may well be conceived that convalescent animals, after sustaining such violent derangements in their health, and having been brought down to the lowest degree of prostration and marasmus--to a reconst.i.tution, we may call it, of the solids and liquids--have a devouring hunger. If, therefore, the keeper who looks after them unhappily forgets that the princ.i.p.al lesions or sores are seated in the stomach and intestines, and if he gives them too much solid nutriment, he impedes the cure, irritates the ulcerations not yet thoroughly covered over, and soon adds another victim to those which had already died.

This convalescence lasts from fifteen to twenty days, and the animal only recovers its health at last by slow degrees. Still the careful keeper need not be afraid of a relapse when he is patient and watchful.

Such, then, is the contagious typhus of the ox. Type of the unreturnable infectious diseases, its virulent miasms undergo within the structure a series of transformations: they produce in the frame a general disorder fully capable of annihilating the predisposition or apt.i.tude of the animal to receive the taint. A disease essentially specific, it affects the princ.i.p.al centres of life; it kills its victim both by its deadly virus and by the local derangements to which it gives rise; for how is it possible to preserve life when the whole nervous system, that promoter and regulator of all the functions, is upset?--when the lungs which revivify the blood, when the digestive organs which are the very sources of alimentation, are smitten with stagnation?--when, in fine, not only these vital centres have ceased to operate, but when each by itself is the cause of torturing pains and exhaustion?

The typhus, moreover, is observed in all animals of the bovine species, whatever may be their race, their age, or their s.e.x. The recovered animals may live with impunity amidst diseased herds of cattle, thanks to its non-relapsive nature. Jessen has even witnessed cows which, after their own cure, communicated a sort of immunity to their offspring. For the same reason it is that epizootias are less fatal in those countries where they often occur, the const.i.tutions of those animals which are engendered amongst such habituated herds, preserving a prophylaxy inherent to the blood which has been transmitted to them.

Besides, what a pregnant subject is this for the physician, and what more meritorious task can he set himself than the treatment of such a distemper, which reason a.s.sures him must eventually lead to the cure and eradication of the same complaint in the human species?

From a cause which as yet has been indistinguishable and imponderable, what important, what marvellous results loom in the future! The air seems to us pure and wholesome, yet it conceals a typhic miasma of the most deadly kind; it carries this pernicious principle into the richest meadows, where we see feeding flocks and herds which to us seem exuberant with health. Then this miasma is inhaled and absorbed, and it meets in the frame the special and indispensable organic element which is needed for its multiplication; there it undergoes certain latent transformations, and a fermentation, a germination, which we call _incubation_, in order to explain a process which we cannot understand.

Then fever is kindled, all the functions are disturbed, and the sick animal is struck down, leaving us wondering, ignorant, and powerless spectators in the presence of phenomena which, nevertheless, are the eternal work of nature and have endured through all time.--But if in the invisible typhic atom nature gives us death, it also gives us life in the zoosperma.

II.

_Lesions found in the Bodies of Oxen after Death._

The description which we have given of the disorders produced in the different functions by the operation of the typhus, may easily suggest what must be the lesions exhibited by the organs of the body.

Death, we have said already, may overtake the disease at any of its periods, and thus show every aspect and every degree of the organic lesions. Such an animal being struck down at the period of initiation, will not, of course, present the changes and varieties of the period of decline, and _vice versa_.

In general, the state of the dead bodies is that of the most decided marasmus; the remains are intensely repulsive, as well by the stench they emit as by the sight they afford; and, in summer especially, decomposition sets in with great rapidity. Consequently, the utmost care is required in conveying them from place to place; and this attention is the more essential, because in the transit, the cavities being deprived of their contractile power, let flow the pestilential liquids which they contain, thereby infecting the carriages and public roads.

The urgent necessity there is to inhume at once these dead bodies, the most active agents in diffusing the contagion, is equally the drift of this observation.

The deceased animal, as a subject of anatomy, enables us to certify the seat of the emphysematous tumours, and to see that they are really due to the air which insinuates itself into the cellular tissue, and which, receding from the pressure of the fingers between the cells, produced the crackling sound we noticed above. This penetration of the air is, moreover, a far more general effect than was supposed.

It is ascertained, likewise, from the examination of these subjects, that the round, fluctuating, and smaller tumours, are indeed purulent gatherings, which occasionally find a pa.s.sage into the layers and interstices of the muscles.

The muscular flesh is usually flabby, bloodless, unsightly, of a very nauseous smell; and it would be difficult to imagine that the most avaricious trickster would dare to offer even the most presentable parts of it for sale and consumption. But when the expedients and artifices known to the butcher's trade are had resort to, when, regardless of the public health, the unprincipled dealer selects the most fleshy parts, when he dresses and adorns them by colouring them over with the blood of a healthy beast, the unwary eye of the purchaser may be deceived.

Observe, that we are now speaking of cattle that have died in the last stage of this marasmus, so that we might suppose, even if the many summonses before the magistrates, and the too moderate fines which have been imposed on the guilty parties, had not shed the broadest light upon the fact, that _a large number of sick cattle which had been slaughtered at different stages of this frightful disease, have been dressed and adorned, exposed for sale, sold, and eaten by a very large portion of the inhabitants of London and of the country likewise_.

_Digestive Channels._--The mucous membrane of the buccal cavity is, for the most part, of a livid whiteness; ecchymosed stains, and sometimes ulcerations, differing in their form and number, are visible on the floor of the tongue. Mr. Simonds has had an anatomical model constructed, which presents a perfect type of these ulcerations, some of which are of a scarlet hue, with perpendicular edges. The _stomachs_ exhibit a variety of ulcerations.

The _paunch_, or first stomach, always contains a large quant.i.ty of food intended for rumination; sometimes these aliments are dry, and lie sticking to its sides; at other times they are diluted with water which had not yet been absorbed after drinking. The inner membrane of this first reservoir may show flat spots, with livid injections of different sizes.

The _honeycomb_, or second stomach, generally exhibits the same injuries as the paunch.

The _manyplies_, or third stomach, contains between its laminae hard, pulverulent, and dry alimentary substances, which are seen sticking to the different leaves. On removing these substances, some ecchymosed spots are laid bare, the epithelium of which easily peels off; sometimes ulcerations, and even perforations, are visible.

The _reed_, or fourth stomach, whose sides are thicker, more fleshy, and more vascular, exhibits within its folds various kinds of lesions or sores: they consist of large flat stains of a darkish red, more or less soft, and sometimes ulcerations red on their deep surface, with clean edges.

As for the intestines, properly so called, the _duodenum_ shows the same injuries, but most generally large ecchymosed spots.

The _small intestine_ appears on the outside, even when it preserves its place in the abdomen, of a reddish colour, lined with vessels distended with blood, the signs of a general congestion of its membranes. The examination of the mucous membrane, after it has been cut open lengthways, shows, indeed, that this portion of the digestive tube is the princ.i.p.al seat of the distemper; for, independently of this general injection, you perceive ulcerations which have succeeded to detached pustules or lengthy flat spots, the result of a cl.u.s.ter of several of Peyer's glands, brought together by the plastic influence of inflammation. These flat spots, or wafers, very similar to those we observe in the typhoid fever of man, are inflamed and ulcerated in different degrees.

The mucous membrane of the _large intestine_ exhibits lesions depending on the period of the disease. About the third period, the injection is sometimes general, especially near the r.e.c.t.u.m; but in the fourth and last period we often meet with ulcerations which are smaller in the upper part, larger and deeper about the lower or rectal part. The membrane of the s.e.xual parts of the cow is strongly injected, and of a dull red colour.

As we have seen, the different organs of the digestive apparatus may, in this typhus, offer to view extensive alterations perfectly consistent with the gravity of the symptoms or the functional derangements. In two cases in which disorders of the respiration had prevailed, and which had been sacrificed on the eighth or tenth day of the disease, we only observed partial injections of a very limited character, either on the gastric membranes or on that of the intestine, and which might have been detected in the case of common intestinal inflammation. Therefore, in these two cases, the characteristic lesions of the typhus, if they must be localized in the intestine, were, so to speak, absolutely wanting. It was, we will not say exactly the same, on four other animals, three oxen and one cow; but if, in two of them, the fourth stomach was inflamed, if in the third the small intestine was congested, and if, lastly, in the cow the large intestine showed ulcerations, we could not in these lesions distinguish those of typhoid fever.

These facts struck us with great surprise, for we were far from suspecting them. We hoped, on opening the intestine of these animals, which had certainly all died of the typhus, to meet a.s.suredly in a determined spot some well-known lesion declared beforehand. To our great astonishment, such has not always been the case. So that our theories, conclusive as they seemed on the ident.i.ty of the ox typhus and the typhoid fever in man, and which more than anyone else we wished to see confirmed, must submit to observation.

In fine, in this epizootia the intestinal lesions or sores present different appearances. Developed to the utmost in some cases, so much so as to exhibit ulcerations at the root of the tongue as well as in the intestines, and to be in a manner the excess of the injuries which are seen in typhoid fever, they are in other cases scarcely perceptible, and sometimes entirely absent, when the animal is struck down in the third or fourth period, that is to say, when the exanthematic or pustular state has had time to develope itself on the digestive channels. One of these animals seized by Mr. Tegg at the Camden Town market, was in such a state of exhaustion that he could not be driven to the slaughter-house, only two hundred yards distant; they were forced to fell him on the spot midway, in order to have him conveyed to the place of dissection. We only detected partial injections on the digestive tube of this beast. The pulmonary emphysema which had caused this animal's death was developed in the highest degree.--He was opened at the request of M. Bouley, of Alfort.