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

When the diarrhœa becomes fetid and bloody, give, night and morning, a clyster composed of a decoction of Peruvian bark, and a teaspoonful of powdered charcoal from the poplar, well sifted. If the running from the nostrils begins to stop, you must inject into the nasal orifices some spoonfuls of a sternutatory solution, thus composed —

Should any sores form on the skin, or should they arise from the opening of purulent deposits, dress them with the following ointment —

If the natural heat diminishes greatly, if the chill reaches the hams and skin, let the beast be rubbed all over, three times a day, with wool, moistened with the following liniment —

Simultaneously with the above, give the following cordial, to be drunk in two draughts —

Should the animal fall into a state of lethargy, you must have recourse to strokes of fire, according to surgical usage.

This distemper must extend to its extreme degree of gravity before it advances towards its cure; you need, therefore, not despair until the last moment. At this period of exhaustion, the drinks above-mentioned are given up, or you add nutritive beverages to them, such as beef-tea, fat soups, milk, and farinaceous drinks.

If the animal holds on, and his appetite returns, which will be shown by the desquamation of the nostrils, by the return of rumination, by the habit of the beast to look right and left, to question you in a manner, add cut straw to his nutritive drinks: send him out every day into the open air, and let him return by slow degrees to his habitual feeding. But it is extremely important to watch the intestinal functions; to diminish and change the food, if the diarrhœa returns; as such relapses often cause the death of an animal considered out of danger.

Such, then, farmers and graziers, is the treatment to be opposed to the ox typhus: it is simple as respects the remedies, and I have deemed that it ought to be so, in order that the medicines prescribed might be had everywhere, and at a cost which the poor man could command as well as the rich. The disease is variable, it is not always equally deadly; and there comes a moment when in some sort it cures itself, with a little assistance and watching. The great point is, to be careful and vigilant, to attend to nature and the instincts of the suffering cattle, and lend yourselves to both.

I cannot reproduce here the instructions given by the Privy Council to protect your cattle from contagion, and above all not to propagate it, but I shall refer you to Doctor Thudichum's Memorandum, page 257. This exposition is too complete to need anything added to it by me; study it well; let it be your monitor and guide; read it over again and again; your own interests and those of the whole country depend on the manner in which you shall treat this admirable warning.

There are in this disease, as in every other, unforeseen varieties and complications, such as those which are brought on by the gestation and abortion of cows, and those proceeding from prior disease; for these accidents you will provide. Moreover, such a terrible distemper can only be treated according to the advice of a professional man. Call him in, then, follow his advice and prescriptions with rigid exactness, and do not attempt to do better than he; and, above all, arm yourselves against the insidious pretensions of quacks and charlatans, whatever mantle they may put on to hide their ignorance.

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 Diseases generally, but Epizootic and Epidemic Diseases in particular.

The epizootia of bovine typhus which is now extending its unrestricted ravages over this island, and which has assumed the magnitude of a general calamity, has naturally excited and stirred up the public mind. Thoughtful and earnest men could not look on and witness unmoved the ever progressive march of the scourge; but each observer has, consistently with his means and qualifications, striven to find a remedy to resist the evil. Thus, we have seen, and with respectful interest we have watched, the gentlemen of the press, and other men of letters, economists, scientific men, and, above all, physicians, producing from day to day in the newspapers articles and letters of remarkable merit on the all-engrossing subject of this epizootia. The re-opening of the medical colleges furnished the skilful professors at their head with a seasonable opportunity to consider this dire distemper, according to the views of general pathology and medical philosophy, and this they have done with unquestionable talent and ability. Still, something remains to be said on this important matter, and since I have taken up my pen, like others, I wish to mingle my voice with that of my brethren, and inquire whether the time is not come to avail ourselves more fully than we have done yet of the grand discoveries of the exact sciences, which, with respect to the science of medicine, are the instruments of its progress. And my object in doing so, is, that we may, as far as possible, rise to a level with the ordeal which the future may have in store for us.

Medicine is at once an art and a science. An art it has been at all times, and in every age of civilized man; but it became a science only when human knowledge had acquired a certain expansion; when natural phenomena had been tested and explained; when mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, general anatomy, general pathology, had enabled the inquiring physician to study with important results whatever belongs to his theme; to understand the serial chain and connexion of bodies with each other, in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and to investigate their immutable laws. Uric acid, as we see with the microscope, will always crystallize in rhombohedrons, according to a fixed law; the vegetable cell, the germination of a seed, must obey, and always submit to, the innate and indestructible forces inherent in them. That which is true in the vegetable is true in the animal world, as regards the pre-established order which regulates and controls the phenomena of life. These laws which govern the development of organic phenomena being immutable and everlasting, permit the different generations which succeed each other on our globe to build upon a durable basis, which certifies to the slow and laborious, but irresistible march of human progress.

Medical science being in truth only the application of other positive sciences to the preservation of health and the cure of diseases, continues like them to perfect itself incessantly; but all it can do is to follow them at a distance, and it can never hope to reach their degree of superiority.

These are truths which have been long admitted and felt by us. Therefore, we have appealed for assistance to the discoveries of the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, have in our hands become effectual means of observation and analysis; and we, in our age, gain more knowledge in fifty years than our forefathers did in several centuries, for they were then necessarily rather artists than scholars. In a word, medical science or biology is constituting itself, and if it be fully conscious of its impotence in the case of many diseases, it also knows its progressive improvement. It is striving to achieve the highest place among social institutions, and the day may come when it shall obtain it, for nations will then owe to us their health and life – that is to say, their earthly happiness.

The laws by which organic phenomena are regulated, are, we have said, everlasting; we may also declare that they are general. One of these laws common to the plant, to the shell, to every species of vertebrata, reappears in man, whose organization comprises all the functions divided among the other organic kingdoms. Not only does the organization of man obey the laws which govern the vital phenomena of other animals; not only does he possess their organs and functions, but he is a tributary subject to their diseases. So that the knowledge of the laws affecting the functions and diseases of those creatures which are placed below him in the scale of animals ought to be the first foundation of all medical study.

These truths are too manifest to be new; they are written and professed everywhere, and every one amongst us has received general notions of comparative anatomy and physiology at the beginning of his course of study. But let us admit that these notions only served to expand the circle of our knowledge and ideas, and that we seldom or never apply them to the practice of our art. It would have been very different had we received at the beginning of our medical novitiate, not merely in theory and books, but practically and experimentally, precise notions of anatomy, physiology, and, let me add, of the pathology of all animals. Let us suppose for a moment that the task had been imposed upon us before entering upon the study of human maladies, to observe the structure of plants and animals, to submit their tissues to microscopical examination and chemical analysis; to study experimentally all their functions and diseases, and acknowledge that had such been the case, the anatomy, physiology; and pathology of man would have been far better understood, and that most of the difficulties against which we now contend in vain in our helplessness, might easily have been overcome.

Comparative anatomy and physiology are the first conditions of all medical instruction of a serious character; there can be no doubt on the subject, but the evidence being not perhaps so palpable with respect to comparative pathology, it will not be useless, therefore, to enter into fuller particulars as to this subject.

We know not whether any one has ever sought to retrace the first origin of our diseases in the animal kingdom, but it would undoubtedly be a study of great scientific interest. As for us, we gladly believe that man, created to be the sovereign lord of the earth, did not originally receive the principle of every organic disease with which we see him affected. It seems to us probable that he was created sound in body and in mind, but unequal is his vital powers, and in his faculties and talents, the social functions being various and dissimilar, and subject to physical and moral infirmities. We think it likely that plants and animals, from which, in course of time, man's substance is formed, have transmitted the first causes, the germs of some organic diseases with which they were themselves affected. We see in this transmission of animal diseases to man, a connecting link, which appears to us to be a condition of harmony, order, peace, and happiness among all living beings. It seems to us that the first injunction of a legislator should be —love other animals like yourselves; for if man had practised this maxim, he would have logically applied the same to his fellow-creatures; and no doubt, with such principles to guide them, past generations would not have bequeathed to us the innumerable calamities we have had to deplore.

We think that we receive from animals some of their diseases, because the fact is palpably evident; thus they have parasitical diseases, such as favus, tænia, psora, trichinosis, which they transmit to us. They are likewise smitten with small-pox, typhoid fever, and with typhus; and under certain given conditions they may transmit them to us. They die of consumption and cancer, and it is probable that they transfuse into us through their milk and flesh the germs of these diseases. Finally, we have our epidemics as they have their epizootics; and here we will limit our instances of this reciprocation.

It is certain that the study of these maladies in animals would have been for us the source of precise knowledge, which, if well understood and explained, would have often led to their preventive treatment. This is what has occurred in the case of small-pox; it is what will one day occur in typhoid fever, in times of epidemic, as will be the case in a certain number of other general or local diseases.

In truth, some complaints now looked upon as inherent to the human species, were originally foreign to it; most parasitical diseases belong to this class. Thus man has not the psora, or itch – the disease does not properly belong to him; the parasite which engenders it is not bred in him, it is always transmitted to him by animals. It is the same with the tænia, or tape-worm, with the trichina, or fine hair-worm.

Medical science, instituted on the bases of comparative pathology, would have made the study of diseases in the brute creation, not the collateral, but the principal object of its inquiries. It would have applied itself to the cure of the lower animals; and whilst learning to cure them, it would have ensured the cure of men's diseases.

If such be the case, can any one believe that the treatment of diathetic and hereditary maladies would be, as they still are, insoluble problems; and that the physician would have the misery of seeing decimated, whilst he helplessly looks on, a large part of the population, condemned inevitably to die of consumption and cancer? Would every man smitten with hydrophobia be irrevocably condemned to death? Assuredly, it would not be so.

That the physician should have been reduced to the painful necessity of confessing his want of means, when medicine could be nothing more than an art, we admit; but now that science has grown up and come of age, society has a right to challenge him to do, what in past ages could not have been expected of him. Briefly, we think that the time is come, by blending comparative pathology with anatomy and physiology, to construct one of the bases of the tripod on which medical science will have to rest. The success which has already been achieved in this direction is a certain guarantee for those which we may hope for hereafter.

Such is our deep conviction, and perhaps we have some title to speak out decidedly on this point, as we have long since exemplified our precepts by actual proofs.

Persuaded for many years that comparative pathology afforded to industrious men a new mine, rich in precious veins for working, we several times endeavoured to explore this fertile field. But, unfortunately, our means of action not being consistent with our sanguine expectations, we were repeatedly compelled to suspend our pursuits, until at last we found at the Ecole Vétérinaire d'Alfort, the favourable opportunity and the essential conditions of which we had so long been in quest.

Grieved at our helplessness to stay the ravages of pulmonary consumption, I formed one day the resolution to study that wasteful complaint in animals in order to discover, or at least to look for, the required remedy. With that view, I confined in a dark, cold, and damp cellar a number of animals to practise on: birds of different species, rabbits, a monkey, a dog, &c. To these animals I dealt out a deficient quantity of food. The monkey, as might have been expected, was the first to be affected, since in our climates they all die of consumption. Next, and for the same reason, it was the parrot's turn; then the chickens and ducks died; after them the rabbits; – in fine, at the end of fourteen months, the dog alone survived. All the rest had sunk under consumption, and exhibited tubercles in different organs – in the lungs or mesentery.

It was then necessary to have the counter-proof: to place a second set of animals in the same conditions, to produce the disease again, and attempt its cure. But the first experiment had been a long one, and I was forced to relinquish the inquiry, which, moreover, was above my means at that period.

On another occasion, it seemed to me strange that we should be obliged to open the bladder of patients suffering from the stone, or to subject them to lithotrity, which has also its perils. Nature, I said to myself, forms calculi by uniting organic elements, by crystallizing them, and by cementing them with vesical mucus. But would it not be possible to cure the disease by employing contrary means – dissolving the calculi in the bladder by means of continued injections, changing the chemical agents according to the composition of the calculus, and adding thereto the action of a galvanic current?

After this, I pursued my inquiry in this direction. I studied for several months the chemical composition of calculi by examining them in their dissolved state; and I saw that those in which the alkaline bases prevailed, being submitted to a diluted solution of tartaric acid, which would not injure the bladder, crumbled after a time; that the calculi with excess of acid were also attacked by an alkaline solution; in fine, that the calculi of oxalate of lime alone seemed to resist the action of these chemical solutions. But it is well known that they sometimes defy all lithotrite instruments, and compel us to have recourse to the knife.

These preliminary experiments over, it was necessary to come to their application, and for that purpose to make experiments on some animals. The canine species, omnivorous like ourselves, was chosen in preference. Bitches were selected to be practised on; for as their urinary passages are wider and more flexible, it enabled me to insert in the bladder fragments of calculi already analysed, which were to serve as the nuclei to the stones they were intended to develop.

This second assortment of animals, penned up apart from each other, were supplied with different modes of sustenance: some of them were put upon a diet of meat only, others on a farinaceous diet, and a third set on a mixed course of food. These experiments were being regularly followed up, when an important and unforeseen event compelled me to desist at the end of six months. The poor animals were destroyed; but all of them, as I had anticipated, had generated calculi of various chemical composition.

These unfinished inquiries concerning comparative pathology, thus interrupted in spite of myself, might, had circumstances allowed them to reach the goal, have authorized us to undertake in man the dissolution of stone in the bladder. And how would this have been effected? By seizing the stone between the two ends of the catheter with the double current, and by injecting a well-sustained series of dissolvents into the patient, whilst lying at his ease in a recumbent posture.

Nor is this all. They would likewise, I believe, have thrown some light on the organic production of calculi, on the lithic diathesis, and the particular formation of the stone; and led us, in some degree, to their preventive treatment, which is always superior to the curative remedy.

On a subsequent occasion, I betook myself to my task under more favourable conditions. I undertook at Alfort, conjointly with Professor Delafond, a course of experiments on the cutaneous diseases of animals in relation to comparative pathology, having already, whilst walking the hospitals, published a work on the "Entomology and Pathology of Psora in Man," which had been printed at the expense of the Academy.

These inquiries and examinations at Alfort were persisted in for five years, and were considered to have led to very satisfactory results as regards general pathology. But I have spoken of these labours in the first part of my book.

Pardon me, reader, and do not suppose that vanity or any desire to parade myself has induced me to refer to these experiments. No; my only object is to show to what results similar studies might lead, if they were executed on a large scale and on the whole animal kingdom; if, instead of these partial efforts made under favour, some special and appropriate medical institution encouraged earnest experimentalists, supplying them without stint with all necessary resources, and with the best and completest instruments of observation.

Will any one deny, that if medical science had been settled on this foundation fifty years ago – that is to say, since the exact sciences first began to provide us with the means of investigation, it would now be so impotent? Epizootias and epidemics would not thus flout us as they do; the cholera would no longer be an enigma, nor the ox typhus so incurable. No! a hundred times no! Medical science would not he helpless and impotent in our day, had our forerunners been more mindful and provident.

But, instead of this, the science for which we plead would have done good work. It would have made and confirmed an infinite variety of observations on the brute creation; it would have transmitted our diseases to them as they transmit their diseases to us; it would have treated and cured these diseases, and every such cure would have been a new triumph, a new victory for mankind.

For instance, during an outbreak of cholera, this science would have been ready and prepared to try different experiments on men and animals; it would first have communicated the cholera to animals, and then submitted them to a variety of experimental treatments. This cholera, which is not an infectious fever, with its regular and assigned periods, like typhus, and which we are not obliged to suffer to run its course, but which, on the contrary, is a nervous affection produced by some poisonous miasma, the toxical effects of which first of all assail the nervous system and then more particularly the great sympathetic; the cramps being but the result of a reflective action —this cholera, we say, must be curable, and well-advised experiments would reveal the remedy we want for it, nor should we have to wait long for the revelation.

As for me, I once made a desperate attempt in this direction. It was during the cholera of 1854. We remarked whilst dissecting subjects, as is always the case, that the mucous membranes of the stomach and intestines, which were in a manner paralyzed, had suffered the fluid parts of the blood to ooze out on the surface. Hence the cause of those vomitings, and those watery and colourless diarrhœas which nothing can stop, so that at a given moment the patients die, poisoned, of course, but dying more particularly through want of circulation, the blood being reduced to its solid parts and unable to circulate any longer. Relying on this fact, and trusting for want of better to the secondary effects, I strove to restore to the blood its aqueous part, and, if possible, to re-establish the circulation.

With this view, I went to the Hôpital de la Charité, provided with all the requisite instruments. Choleraic patients were being brought there every hour. The experiments being new, venturesome, and dangerous, in the eyes of the hospital directors, I was only suffered to operate on the moribund. The first patient, considered to be in a state sufficiently desperate to be given up to me, was a woman, forty-five years old. She was literally insensible, and thoroughly cold. I hesitated for a moment to try the operation under conditions so unreasonable, so preposterous – almost upon a corpse. The radial arteries in the arm had ceased to beat, and the heart alone kept up a feeble circulation at the central parts. At length I opened the vein, from which not a single drop of blood proceeded, and taking the usual measures to prevent the air from having access, I gradually and slowly injected two ounces of alkaline solution, the process of injection lasting twelve minutes. It was scarcely over before the patient half-opened her eyelids, and looked about her with astonishment; the pulse became perceptible for a few moments, and all present thought she was saved. We put a few questions to her; the patient could not answer us, but she nodded as much as to say "yes," when asked if she felt better. But this was all we could do in her case. The circulation stopped again, the patient relapsed into her state of insensibility and died two hours after the injection.

The result obtained in this instance had not answered our expectation. However, the circulation had for a minute or two resumed its course, and a flash of reason had once more shown itself.