On the Cattle Plague: or, Contagious Typhus in Horned Cattle. Its History, Origin, Description, and Treatment

Chapter Iv.--Treatment of the Ox-Typhus 206

1 & 2. Means and Measures to be employed to resist the Causes of Contagious Typhus of the Bovine Species 208 3. Curative Medication 237 4. Hygienic Measures to be taken against the Extension of the Contagion--Acts and Orders concerning sanitary Police Regulations 257

THIRD PART.

To Farmers and Graziers 281

FOURTH PART.

Suggestions on the Improvements to be effected in the Study of Medical Science, in order that we may be in a Condition to confront Disease generally, and Epizootic and Epidemic Diseases in particular 311

APPENDIX.

Various Documents 337

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 space. The cosmic phenomena pursue their perpetual course, and the organic phenomena, à 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 classed medical science--in vain that we have arbitrarily instituted 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 principal 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.

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, pass 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 latitude, 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.

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