On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, description, and treatment

"Since there is observed to follow the greatest flow of the contagious and putrid particles separated from the blood, wherever the infectious matter makes an impression at first, particular care must be taken not to inoculate near such vital parts as the heart and lungs, nor near the womb, if a cow with calf be inoculated; for, though rowels are properly applied in the dewlaps, to draw off the pestilential humour from the breast, and in other cases beasts are frequently rowelled in the flanks, – yet in this operation, as matter is inserted by these channels into the neighbouring vessels, those vital parts, or the womb, might become the chief seat of the disease, and the event prove fatal.

"To prevent such accidents, human beings have been inoculated on the arms and legs, and now-a-days the arms are found sufficient. I would recommend that the cattle should be inoculated about the middle of the shoulders or buttocks, on both sides, to have the benefit of two drains. The skin is to be cut lengthways two inches, deep enough for the blood to start, but not to bleed much. In this incision is to be put a dossil or pledget of tow, dipped in the matter of a boil full ripe, opened in the back of a young calf recovering from the distemper. It may not be amiss to stitch up the wound, to keep the tow in, and let it remain forty-eight hours. Then the stitches are to be cut, the tow taken out, and the wound dressed with yellow basilicon ointment, or one made with turpentine and yolk of egg, spread on pledgets of tow. These dressings are to be continued during the whole illness, and till after the recovery of the beast, to promote the discharge; and then the wound may be healed with the cerate of lapis calaminaris, or any other.

"On the third day after inoculation, the discolouring of the wound, whose lips appear grey and swollen, will be a sign that the inoculation has succeeded; but the beasts, as Professor Swenke informs us, did not fall ill till the sixth day, which answers exactly to the observations daily made in the inoculating of children. Yet the Professor adds that on the third day a costiveness came on, which was removed by giving each calf three ounces of Epsom salts.

"No sooner do the symptoms of heaviness and stupidity appear than the beasts must have a light covering thrown over them, and at night fastened loosely. They must be rubbed morning and evening, and curried, till the boils begin to rise; warm hay-water and vinegar-whey must be given plentifully. Should the beasts require more nourishment, dry meat, such as hay, with a little bran, may be offered. I should be very cautious in giving milk-pottage, even after the boils and pimples had all come out, for fear of bringing on a scouring. However, this caution is proper, that whenever milk-pottage be given the vinegar-whey is to be omitted for obvious reasons. In cases of accident, the same attention is to be observed in the disease by inoculation as in the natural way, and the medicines recommended are the same I would use; but by inoculation there seldom is a call for any, so favourably does the distemper proceed through its several stages.

"The crisis being over, it will be proper to purge the cattle, to air them by degrees, and to have the same regard in the management of them as is laid down in the chapter on the method of cure."

The typhic virus is so highly infectious and poisonous that the first animals inoculated would have all died; it would have been necessary to inoculate successively a number of animals with the virus derived from the first inoculation, and transmitted from an inoculated animal to a healthy one, by which means they would have acquired a virus of the first, second, third generation, and so on. These inoculations having always been made on four animals at a time; on two of them, the disease would have been left to take its own course, in order that the experimentalists might watch its progress and development, and the two others would have supplied the virus for inoculation.

At the third or fourth generation, the virus, modified and attenuated in its infectious principles, would no longer have been mortal in its effects, as experience has proved in Russia. Then the inoculated animals, placed under the control of hygienic cares and a few purgative and tonic medications, would have passed from convalescence to health. The virus thus attenuated would have supplied the means of a practical inoculation on a large scale to all healthy animals.

Proceeding thus, they would, moreover, but have followed the method adopted in those times of epidemic and epizootia when the small-pox is raging. On those occasions, we subject our sick patients to vaccination or revaccination; we inoculate the variola in our sheep threatened with the contagion; we pursue the same course in cases of epizootia, of peripneumonia. And truly, that which it is reasonable to do in one case may be generalized and applied to a greater number.

The experiment we have suggested might, perhaps, have been long and difficult, nay, even costly, but we should have established, after a certain time, the rational method of this preventive treatment, and have distributed the same throughout the country. Veterinarians would have formed in particular districts their centre of operation, in which the preventive virus might have been produced, and they might have gone from farm-house to farm-house to inoculate all the cattle within them.

From these facts and observations made by the physicians, precious documents would have been derived; and if, contrary to all expectation, success had not justified every hope, we should have bequeathed to future generations facts and experiences which would have been of the most useful character to them and full of instruction. Thus it is that science advances and progress is accomplished.

If all that we have just indicated as a realizable matter had been done, in effect, England would have afforded in this, as she has so often done in other cases, a noble example to be followed, and would have acquired a new title to the admiration of other nations.

But, unfortunately it has not been so: silence has succeeded to eloquence at Guildhall, and the meetings at the Mansion-house have flickered away. That which was held on the 27th of September, seems likely to be the last of them.21

The subscriptions which, in spite of all the praiseworthy efforts and earnestness of the Lord Mayor, did not reach 2000l., were returned to the subscribers, so that all the attempts which have been made to centralize the direction to be given to the various measures have proved abortive. The plan of forming sanitariums, as well as that of compensating the owners of cattle, have both fallen to the ground.

What can we think of such a state of things when we see the ox-typhus extending its ravages to sheep, and have to fear that the disease will spread to other animal species? What serious reflections it creates in our minds, and what awful consequences we might deduce therefrom! But what would be the use of them?

Let us add, however, that France, save on the recognised principle of indemnification, and a more speedy extermination of her tainted cattle, has shown the same deficiency as to the means of treatment as England; whilst we have the consolation of attributing this impotence on the part of this country to the fact that the outbreak of the epizootia has occurred during the Parliamentary recess.

It is, therefore, to institutions rather than to individuals that we must ascribe the impossibility of conquering the difficulties which have been met, and which at any other time might not have obstructed the course of things. Far be it from us therefore to accuse of indifference a great people renowned for their zealous promotion of public interests, for their charity and inexhaustible philanthropy, whose innumerable asylums have been opened to every misfortune, who support so many hospitals and public charities by their voluntary contributions, and who, in so many calamities, have seen some devoted heroine issue from her retirement to assuage them. For if the Crimean war produced its lady beneficent in the person of Florence Nightingale, all of us must allow that if others had followed the example of Miss Burdett Coutts, who, in a manner, has stood alone against the storm, by the facilities she has afforded for treating and experimentalizing on the cattle smitten with typhus, the formidable scourge might have been arrested in its focus.

IIICurative Medication

We might acquire the means of resisting the general causes which develop the typhus; we might stop its diffusion, we might even prevent it, by inoculating the sound and healthy animals, and yet it would be necessary, none the less, to search for the means of curing it; for, as in the small-pox, the preventive treatment of which we know, certain circumstances would arise in the disease which would oblige us to treat it. And as we are far from being able to resist the generation and dissemination of this scourge, which reckons almost as many victims as sufferers, it is important to make known what treatment we can oppose to the functional derangements to which it gives rise.

As we have already said, this typhus, when the organism has absorbed its peccant and infectious miasma, produces a succession of disorders which become in a manner temporary functions; it pursues its phases, its periods; and as the functional derangements differ at these several epochs from the development of the morbid phenomena, the course of medicine which is employed to check them cannot always be the same. Starting, therefore, from practical data, we will attend the disease in its gradual advance – that is to say, in its distinct periods – and will afterwards explain certain predominant symptoms, which, owing to their importance, must likewise fix the attention of the careful therapeutist.

It will be remembered that we have recognised four periods in the regular course of typhus: —

1st, a period of incubation;

2nd, a period of initiation;

3rd, a period of duration;

4th, a period of decline.

But, in the first place, before beginning the treatment, every farmer or grazier, or cattle-owner, who keeps a certain number of cattle, should divide his herd into several classes, in order to regulate and methodize the cares to be given to the sick.

Thus, he will form a first class, comprising the animals in a sound and healthy state, having had no intercourse, either direct or indirect, with the tainted cattle, and which he will be careful immediately to isolate and keep apart.

A second class must be formed of those beasts, which, though as yet unaffected with the distemper, have, nevertheless, been exposed more or less directly to its contagion, by living and consorting with them, or by their contact with other animals, either at fairs or markets, or in the ships and cattle-trucks on the railway during their transit from one place to another. The horned cattle composing this latter class must be carefully watched, and be made the subject of the preventive treatment, the moment the first sign appears of the working of the incubation.

A third class must be formed, consisting of cattle actually smitten with the distemper.

These divisions of animals being thus settled and separated, will diminish the labour and the cost of treatment and the liability to diffuse the complaint, especially when the epizootia begins to lose its virulence.

First Period – of Incubation

We have said that infectious diseases, when once the frame had suffered the effects of the poisonous miasma, pursued their fatal course, and that, generally speaking, it was impossible after such infection to arrest its development. We say generally, for the typhus at the outbreak of its appearance on a virgin soil sometimes manifests itself in a benignant manner, then it becomes more destructive, by-and-bye its pernicious properties decline, and it in some sort goes out of itself. One would say that the epizootia, like those it smites, has likewise its peculiarities, its period of initiation, of duration, and of decline. There are in consequence fixed times or epochs during which the sufferers afford better scope for our means of action; at a given moment the attenuated virus, having lost much of its deadly effects, ceases to produce death, which decline is the real source of the marvellous successes obtained by certain remedies against the epizootia.

If it be true that the distemper at its period of duration, and at its most critical moment, cannot be fettered, we should not be justified in asserting positively the same, as respects the period of incubation. Indeed, we are convinced ourselves, that if ever this disease shall be clogged in the wheel, if ever its specific remedy shall be discovered, it will be within the period of incubation, when the economy begins to struggle with the first phenomena of the poisoning. Be that as it may, we cannot, in epizootic times, too earnestly enjoin the owners of cattle to submit their animals to a strict and close inspection, in order that, when the first signs of incubation appear, they may modify the animal's usual diet, and attack the disease at its birth, so as to render it abortive, if the thing can be done.

At this period we must endeavour to come to Nature's assistance, we must shake and stir up the economy, we must unseat the morbid functions which seek to master us, and then the vital force, thus solicited and stimulated, may sometimes struggle with advantage. To do this effectually, if the animal is atonic and predisposed to adynamia, if his internal organs are relaxed, we will strengthen him by administering every day a stimulating beverage. If he is confined to the stall we will give him the open air, and let him graze the fields; which is a treatment by itself for the invalid animal, so vivifying is the pure air of the common, and so thoroughly different from the atmosphere which is pent up within his stall. If the animal is strong, lusty, exuberant with health, let him be purged once or twice, the purgative to be given at intervals of twenty-four hours. (We shall give the medical formula in the chapter addressed to farmers, graziers, &c.)

This purgation, moreover, will correspond with the theory of those authors who consider the evacuations as the proper means of delivering the economy from the infectious miasms which have been absorbed.

If the beast is plethoric, recourse should sometimes be had to bleeding, especially in hot and dry seasons, like the one we have recently passed through.

These stimulative and depletive medications cannot but be favourable to the animal, since it will anticipate the treatment to which he must be submitted a few days later, when the disease shall have declared itself.

To this treatment, in some sort preventive, must be annexed an antimiasmatic beverage, either a permanganate of potash, or a solution of chlorate of potash, or of arsenic acid in powder, mixed with some aromatized beverage, or solution of arseniate of soda. These anti-typhic drinks must be discontinued on those days when the sick cattle are purged.

It need hardly be said, that during this period of incubation the feeding of the cattle must be strictly attended to, and that the animal must receive unusual hygienic care.

Second Period, or that of Initiation

At this period the constitution and temperament of the sick cattle must first of all be deliberately studied, so as to ascertain fully which are lymphatic, which are nervous, and which are sanguine. We must notice the age, the sex, the state of gestation, and make allowance for any prior complaints to which any of the sick cattle may have been subject. 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, 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 bleeding must be more or less copious, according to the strength of the animal. For, it must not be forgotten that we have several critical phases to pass through, and if we exhaust the animal by too largely draining him of blood, we may forfeit the success of the treatment. If bleeding is considered unnecessary, let the sufferer be purged at once, by administering either sulphate of magnesia (Epsom salts), or sulphate of soda (Glauber's salt). These purges to be taken daily, for two or three days, according to the way they operate. Linseed oil, mixed in some warm beverage, may be given instead of these, or else a mixture of rhubarb and calomel, or even a decoction of senna. Preference should be given to saline or laxative purges, as, drastic purgatives, such as aloes or jalap, sometimes concentrate the inflammation on the narrow parts of the digestive channels.

In this second stage – the period of initiation – the appetite is generally gone, the thirst excessive; so that nutritive or solid feeding must of course be suppressed.

As for the drinks, they must be cold, consisting of water with sufficient flour mixed in it to whiten it, and a little vinegar or sulphuric acid, to acidulate it. A decoction of good hay with some marine salt, or nitrate of potash; a decoction of pellitory or wall-wort, of ground-ivy, or whey, or buttermilk, likewise acidulated, and which the cattle are very partial to, will in every way be suitable for their use. If the heat of the skin diminishes, and if congestion appears to settle on the lungs, the drinks must be given warm, consisting of a decoction of borage leaves, mallows, marsh-mallow, and pellitory. In these cases, the body must be protected from chills by overlaying it with blankets, so as to keep the mass of the blood as much as possible on the surface, and check the tendency it has to load the internal organs.

By following these prescriptions, we shall answer all the conditions of the treatment during the second period. In truth, by the process of bleeding, we shall have reduced the heat of the fever, and prevented too great a flow towards the nervous, pulmonary, or digestive centres. The purgings will have acted with similar effects; and, what is more, they will have cleared the primæ viæ, and rendered the circulation of the abdominal apparatus more easy. In fine, the drinks will have contributed to assuage the violence of the fever. The washing, which must be effected with a wet sponge passed over the nose, mouth, and eyes, and then over the skin, which must afterwards be rubbed dry, will be both useful and pleasant to the sick animal. This cleansing will maintain the important functions of the skin in due order.

Some persons have advocated as most efficacious at this period hydro-therapia, or the Water-cure, in the form of warm and cold ablutions, vapour baths, &c. This treatment, so bracing by its revulsive action, and the powerful influence of which we witnessed for several years in the establishment which we superintended at Belle Vue, near Paris, might prove of some service in ox-typhus, especially in the form of the vapour bath; but it requires so much practice, and so incessant and watchful a care, that it is needful to have the process attended by an experienced practitioner.

We must remark, in addition, that the general state of the animal, and his desire for food, will show the degree of strictness and restraint which must be observed in regulating his diet. His instinct must be taken by us as a guide; and if the drinks rendered nutritive by the addition of bran, oatmeal, barley flour, or even seed of grass pounded, are relished by him, we must indulge his desires to some extent, in order to keep up his strength.

Third Period, or that of Duration

At this stage of the distemper we must watch and follow step by step the symptoms which attend it, and come to their relief.

All the secretions have now resumed their course; from the mucous membranes there occurs a copious discharge, first of all serous, then thick and muco-purulent; the breathing may be obstructed, the diarrhœa frequent; the air infiltrates beneath the integument. The fever is sometimes continuous, sometimes intermittent. We must satisfy the cravings of the vital powers by administering the same beverages as in the preceding period. Far from checking the diarrhœa, as some advise, we must regulate the evacuations by means of laxatives, such as tartrate of potash, sulphate of magnesia, or sulphate of soda. It is very essential, indeed, that the mucous membranes of the digestive channels should be free, and not irritated by the contact of solid alimentary substances or bilious secretions.

If the diarrhœa be too frequent or irritating, we must give the sufferer night and morning a clyster, consisting of bran water.

At this period we will follow the advice given over and over again by all the physicians of the last century, and apply cauteries with red-hot iron, or fix one or two setons either on the dewlap, the neck, or the thighs, and these issues must be kept open by means of basilicon ointment. It is unquestionably of the highest importance to promote all the depurative secretions in animals whose cellular tissue is choked up with grease and lymph. Those only have got well in which the running has been regular and copious, and the wasting of the flesh progressive.

If the fever is not regular, two pills of sulphate of quinine must be given, each pill containing one gramme, one pill in the morning, the other during the day, in order to prevent the fit, which usually takes place in the evening. If the state of atony, of adynamia, comes on at this period, acetate of ammonia must be given, from one to six ounces, in a pint of water, the same to be administered in two doses; only the acidulous or alkaline drinks must be discontinued, otherwise the acetate of ammonia would be decomposed in its passage into the digestive channels. Finally, the eyes, the nostrils, and the mouth must be frequently washed with an infusion of camomile, or some other aromatic plant.

The setons must be kept up very carefully. If the sick animal relishes the nutritive beverages, let him have a decoction of bread, rice, barley, or oats.

Fourth Period, or that of Decline

At this stage of the disease, in which adynamia predominates, everything must tend to support the organism. The drinks must be bitter and stimulating; beer, with plenty of hops in it, with an addition of powdered Peruvian bark or sulphate of iron, may be given; or a decoction of this bark, with gentian roots, centaury leaves, and hops; or again, a beverage may be administered night and morning, made of veterinary theriacum, of extract of juniper and alcohol; or finally, an infusion of aromatic plants.

If the diarrhœa be bloody and fetid, give the animal night and morning a clyster, consisting of a decoction of Jesuit's bark, adding thereto a spoonful of powdered wood charcoal, pounded to the finest powder, and passed carefully through a sieve. If the running ceases, its return must be excited by injecting in the nostrils a spoonful of sternutatory vinegar or smelling salts. Finally, the purulent boils must be opened, and dressed with stimulating ointment.

At this closing period, which determines the fate of the disease, as we say, there is a tendency to despair of the cure. Seeing the fatal course of most attacks, we lose heart, death seems inevitable, and we yield its prey to its fangs. But let us not despair; let us remember that, in these febrile infectious diseases, above all, the phenomena must almost always proceed to the last stage of exhaustion of the vital powers to render the cure attainable. Some patients, smitten with typhoid fever or cholera, have owed their lives to the indefatigable tenacity of the contest in extremis between life and death.

I still see before me a choleraic patient, whom, during the epidemic of 1849, I had left in the morning at ten o'clock, passing into the cold period. At five o'clock I returned to see him; the whole family was in tears, and the sheet had been thrown over the patient's head, as if he had already breathed his last. Time was precious to me at that fell season, and I was about to retire, when I applied my finger to the wrist of the sufferer, and felt a faint pulsation at long intervals. I threw my coat off directly, called for flannel and essential oil of mustard, which I had prescribed that morning. I set the example, and instantly the whole family helped me to rub the patient in every direction. In a quarter of an hour the heart quickened and revived, and in less than half an hour more the circulation resumed its course; at the end of an hour of this obstinate struggle the vital heat began to show itself – in a word, the patient was saved.