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

These experiments having been submitted to the judgment of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, were honoured with its approval, and the reports concerning them were printed at the Academy's expense, and crowned at the competitive examination.

The vital resistance of horned cattle is so feeble, that those animals which are periodically exhibited in the north of London, though certainly chosen from among the most healthy and robust, could not herd together in large numbers for the space of a month in the Agricultural Hall at Islington, without sinking under infectious and contagious diseases – almost one and all. Under the conditions in which we see them in that Show, a single month would be sufficient to produce almost their complete destruction; for even a single week, which is the usual duration of their confinement, affects them so much as to render a large proportion of them unhealthy.

Every one knows how apt cavalry horses are to sicken and die off during a campaign. Every one has heard of the fearful ravages amongst the horses of the Allied armies during the Crimean war, when many companies were dismounted owing to this mortality.

Let us now transport ourselves in thought into the middle of those immense steppes where vast and innumerable herds of herbivorous animals are being bred for our supply, and consider what will be the effects on their health and life if they should be afflicted with a scarcity of forage, in consequence of this long dry summer.

It is unnecessary to say that there exist in Russia, in Hungary, in Australia, in North and South America, and in many other parts of the globe, large tracts of country which are still uninhabited, whose uncultivated soil supplies with food great numbers of sheep and cattle. These spacious tracts, known as moorlands or steppes, particularly abound in Russia, on the banks of the Wolga, the Don, the Dnieper; in Hungary, on the banks of the Danube; and also in South America, in the republics of Venezuela, New Granada, Columbia, &c.

Now, in hot and rainy seasons these steppes teem with rich and luxuriant verdure; the plants growing up in the marshes are prolific and abundant, and even those parts of the wild moors which produce nothing but heath are capable of feeding and fattening flocks and herds.

Under conditions so auspicious as these, animals may still suffer, but in what way? By excess of food, or repletion. They are in general robust and healthy, and thus fortified they inhale without detriment the deleterious gases of oxygen with carbon, carburetted hydrogen and the like, exhaled by the plants which grow out of the swampy soils. Thus protected, too, they are proof against the fluctuations of the seasons, and against every injury which threatens them; and their strong and sound condition enables them to sustain the fatigues of their long and arduous journeys, and to supply the rich countries of the West with their flesh, fleece, and hides.

When the seasons have thus conveyed a due proportion of heat, water, and electricity to the elements of the soil, both plants and animals conduce to the comfort and health of man, and fulfil his expectations. But the laws of nature are involved in mystery. Good and evil go hand in hand – death and life travel close together – and a few years of prosperous harvests are almost invariably followed by blight, barrenness, and scarcity. Most men think only of the present time, and this imprudence and want of foresight prevent farmers and great cattle proprietors from collecting and holding in reserve the requisite stores of sustenance to supply their sheep and oxen during these barren seasons. Sickness then breaks out, and these helpless creatures perish in vast numbers, to the detriment of their owners' best interests.

And truly, when continual rains cause the rivers to overflow, when the plains are drenched and soaked, or when a burning sun scorches the ground, herbivorous animals wander in vain from field to field in quest of sustenance to restore their strength, or of pure and healthy water to slake their thirst; their vital resistance dwindles away, deleterious gases poison and bewilder them, their blood is debased, and as Ovid says,

"Corpora fœda jacent, vitiantur odoribus herbæ."

And since these mild and harmless animals, which seem to have been created merely to clothe us, and to nourish us with their milk and flesh, have not been endowed by nature either with the intelligence, or the activity, or the cunning, or the invention, or the skill bestowed on the omnivorous and carnivorous species, hard is their fate under the pressing needs of hunger. Peaceful creatures, they browse in vain on deleterious plants on a sterile soil; their external and internal teguments now afford a favourable seat for the propagation of parasites – for the parasitogenia; and soon after a general adynamia, or relaxation of the fibres, delivers them up without resistance to the morbific elements of the infectious diseases to which they are exposed, where the languishing, the sick, and the rotting are herded together, and they are carried off by hecatombs by this wasteful and devouring typhus.

II

We may readily conclude, from these general observations on infectious and contagious diseases, that they must have existed in all former ages; and if in our present advanced state of civilization they are so destructive, we may be sure that in those remote periods they must have been, both as regards man as well as the brute creation, the cause of general extermination, in whatever parts of the earth they prevailed. And indeed, whenever we refer to ancient or modern history, we are continually struck with the analogy which exists between the epidemic diseases signalized by the general name of Plague, and which decimated all the living beings, and those which more recently, and at the present moment, have startled the world by their fatal effects on men and animals.

Moreover, we cannot too often repeat the fact – in order that those documents relating to the past which contain useful instruction may be examined and searched into – that the physiological and pathological laws which rule and determine the phenomena of organic matter, whether in health or sickness, were, like the laws of chemistry, electricity, and astronomy, originally established at the time of creation, and that matter submits with passive obedience to the laws of transformation and transubstantiation, which are the absolute condition of life. These are the eternal laws of which a synthesis so admirable is furnished by the Gospel, in this short injunction, "Take, eat, this is my body; drink, this is my blood."

Now, if man, who is the sovereign master of this matter, did not take care to regulate and modify it for his own benefit and the benefit of all living creatures on whom his own life depends, as well as his wealth and happiness; if he did not seek thereby continually to diminish the sum of evil, and to extend the sum of good which it is his mission to increase, he would violate these laws, which are inherent in matter, and which have existed for his use since the creation of the world.

We must likewise believe that those Plagues which are spoken of in the Bible, those which Homer alludes to, that which is related by Plutarch, and which succeeded the general drought in 753 before Christ; those mentioned by Titus Livius, Virgil, Ovid, and other Latin authors, the most virulent of which plagues raged in the years 310, 212, and 178 of the Foundation of Rome, resembled the epidemics or plagues which are witnessed in our own day.

The plague of 212 swept away all the inhabitants of Sicily, cattle as well as men; that of 178 destroyed all the priests, who sought in vain for victims free from the contagion, to offer them up as sacrifices to the offended Gods.

Cecilius Severus gives a most striking description of a pestilential disease which, in 376 A.D., swept away all the cattle in Europe. Judging from his account of that scourge, we may fairly believe that the distemper he has described was identically the same as the one which has just broken out in England. "A universal distaste, sudden dejection, vertigoes, spasmodic tension in the limbs, a painfulswelling of the lower belly, violent affections of the nerves, sudden death – everything shows the presence of a pestilential ferment, which irritates the solids, infects and vitiates the fluids, which is the cause of the putrefaction of the humours, manifested by the swelling of the lower belly, which in that case depends on a putrid fermentation so as to disengage air."

A piece of iron, representing the sign of the Cross, was heated in the fire, and when red-hot was applied to the forehead of the sick animals; and this remedy was looked upon at that time as the most effectual they could apply.

Grégoire de Tours makes mention of an epidemic, the result of a long dry summer, which, in 592, was very fatal in its havoc, sparing no living creature whatever.

André Duchesne, in his "History of England," speaks of an epidemic which, in 1316, during the reign of Edward II., owed its origin, on the contrary, to a long season of rains.

The celebrated physicians Ramazzini and Lancisi relate that in 1711, an ox which had been imported from Hungary, that constant focus of typhus, displayed the most deadly form of the cattle disease, in the Venetian territory, although no alteration in the air or waters had been observed in Italy, and the seasons had been regular and the pastures abundant. The contagion spread into Piedmont, where it carried of 70,000 head of cattle; thence it extended to France and Holland, each of which countries lost 200,000 of these animals. The trade in hides introduced the distemper into England, where it proved no less fatal. It was the same in the other countries of Europe.

In this disease, the intestines of the affected cattle were, as in the present epizootia, inflamed, and strewed over with livid spots and ulcerations, and the blood, though apparently fluid in the body of the animal, coagulated directly after it had issued from the vein.

Herment thence concludes, that this epizootia is nothing more than an inflammation of the blood. Lancisi advised his contemporaries to put to death without pity every animal which was affected or seemed to be affected with the disease; and it was in England that this spirited resolve was first acted upon.

The three counties of Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey arrested the course of this contagion in less than three months, by adopting this measure; whilst in the rest of the stricken counties of Great Britain, and likewise in Holland, where this decisive course was not taken at all, the disease prevailed among the cattle for several years. Since that time, it has been insisted on by some authors, that the barbarous process of general extermination offers the most effectual remedy which, in our present state of ignorance and improvidence, we could have recourse to, in order to check the diffusion and the duration of this fell disease.

The learned Goelicke describes an epizootia which was witnessed in 1730, at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. His narrative, written with a masterly hand, might very properly be applied to the disease which we are now considering; and the treatment recommended by this earnest and vigilant observer is so wisely deduced from the symptoms, that even in the present day we might take that treatment as a model.

We could have borrowed much more largely from this source of biographical researches had we not deemed that these quotations would be sufficient for the purpose we had in view in this work. But from these authorities we think it may justly be concluded, that infectious and contagious diseases among horned cattle have frequently appeared from the remotest times down to the middle of the eighteenth century.

All these attacks of epizootia were a frequent and severe cause of suffering and misery among animals and men; but the ravages which they left behind them were of slight importance each time, if we compare them with those attending the epizootia which towards the year 1746 affected the animal kingdom. This dreadful scourge lasted ten years, and swept away nearly the whole race of horned cattle throughout Europe. It was closely studied and thoroughly understood in its causes, its symptoms, and its treatment by the scientific authors of that day, and those writers, more judicious than we, did not designate the malady by the title of Plague. This particular visitation deserves to fix our attention in an especial manner, not only on account of its striking resemblance to the disease which now makes us all so anxious, but because it induced two English physicians, Malcolm Flemming and Peter Layard, to write on this disease two accounts or statements which are equal, if not superior, to all the volumes which have since appeared on the subject of the Cattle Disease. There is no help for it, and our pride must bend itself to the acknowledgment: these two men, our seniors by a century, were men of quite another stamp. Their expositions, enriched with quotations from the Greek and Latin authors, abounding in facts, ingenious insights and inferences, are far superior in merit to the multitude of voluminous works which have been written and published since then. It would be easy to prove that these two sagacious inquirers far better understood than we have done the real nature of this cattle disease, and that we must be grateful to them for first opening the way which all of us must take in order to discover the preventive and curative means of which we are still ignorant.

Let us observe, in passing, that these two physicians, who appear to have been scarcely known, enlightened by the effects of the inoculation of small-pox, then practised from man to man, appear to have first conceived the idea, now practised in Russia, of preventing the propagation of the contagious cattle disease by means of inoculation; and we may raise the interest of this remark by reminding the reader that their experiments to inoculate cattle were made in 1757, eight years after the very year which gave birth to the future inoculation of man with animal virus by the celebrated Jenner. By this it would appear that the twofold honour of applying the method of inoculation as both preventive and curative means in respect of contagion in cattle, and as the preventive means by the variola of the cow to resist the ravages of the small-pox in man, is the indisputable claim of English physicians.[1 - To assist the researches of other inquirers on this vital subject, now so generally interesting, we may add, that the cattle treatises already referred to – of Malcolm Flemming and Peter Layard – are to be found in the Library of the British Museum, bound together in a single volume, which is certainly worth ten times its weight in gold. It contains, indeed, eight different opuscula, all relating to cattle complaints, which scientific students may consult with real gratification. I will here transcribe the titles of the most important of these treatises, the pregnant expositions of the two English physicians above-named.That of Malcolm Flemming:"A Proposal, in order to Diminish the Progress of the Distemper among the Horned Cattle, supported by Facts. London, 1755."That of Peter Layard:"An Essay on the Nature, Cause, and Cure of the Contagious Distemper among the Horned Cattle in these Kingdoms. London, 1757."A great many accounts, treatises, and expositions on the same subject appeared at the same time in France, Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland. One, which appeared in the last of these countries, is entitled:"Reflexions sur la Maladie du Gros Bétail, par la Société des Médecius de Genève. 1756."]

III

Very little is known of the origin or first outbreak of the epizootia which produced such fearful ravages in the middle of the eighteenth century. Some suppose that it first appeared in Tartary, where it occasioned a disorder twice as extensive in its pernicious effects as any similar distemper which had been known up to that time. Thence it passed into Russia, from which it spread on one side into Poland, Livonia, Prussia, Pomerania, and Holland, and from that country into England; on the other side towards the East, it invaded the Turkish Empire, Bohemia, Hungary, Dalmatia, Austria, Moravia, Styria, the Gulf of Venice, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the banks of the Rhine, and Denmark.

But another opinion has assigned Bohemia as the source from which this destructive epizootia took its rise, and its supporters allege that during the siege of Prague the cattle feeding in its plains had been deprived of their usual fodder by the continual razzias of the French to supply their own cavalry.

Be this as it may, this virulent cattle disease having at length assumed the proportions of a public calamity, the several governments were obliged to take it into serious consideration, and the medical faculties and most celebrated physicians began to make it the subject of their studies and reports. In France, therefore, the professors of the faculty of Paris and Montpellier, suspending every other pursuit, devoted their most assiduous care and attention to dumb animals.

Sauvages, the Dean of the Faculty at Montpellier, drew up a most philosophical and learned account of the prevailing disease, in which, like Stahl, he forgot probably for a moment the part which, in the progress of distempers, he ascribes to the soul.

The professors of Paris, very famous in their day, but who, having left behind them no works so valuable as the "Nosologia" of Sauvages, are now completely forgotten, likewise addressed the result of their inquiries and lucubrations to the King.

Doctor Leclerc was sent into Holland, whence he brought back a Memorial, which was a reflex of the opinions he found current in Denmark, and which has been transmitted to us in the Memorials of the Royal Society of Science at Copenhagen.

It is evident from the reflections found in the writings of Malcolm Flemming, Layard, and other competent observers, that this formidable epizootia was in its character identical with the one described by Ramazzini and Lancisi in 1711; and we feel warranted in saying, after having examined every work of any importance which has treated of that visitation, that it resembles the disease now prevailing among cattle, in its march, in its symptoms, and in its gravity. We believe that these three visitations constitute but one and the same malady, occurring at three different periods. This appears to us a most important fact, for if such be the case, the tentative treatment of that time deserves our most particular attention. Consequently, a few retrospective glances may perhaps be permitted us, in considering the subject of cattle disease.

The medical professors (including several English physicians), who observed and described the epizootia of 1745, divided the same into three periods.

The duration of the disease, when it passed through all its phases up to the death of the affected animal, consisting of from ten to twelve days, they usually ascribed to each of these periods or stages an average continuance of three or four days.

1st Period.– After a few days of latent incubation, which the observer could not suspect, the sick animal betrayed signs of the morbid state which was about to declare itself, by his careless feeding, by drooping his head, and by exhibiting the deepest dejection of spirits in his attitude and look. Rumination, already imperfect, soon ceased altogether, the appetite failed, the horns, ears, and hoofs were cold, the hair grew stiff, the tongue and mucus looked white; the eyes were tearful and fixed, the hearing obtuse, whilst, in the cows, the supply of milk diminished. In cases of unusual gravity, transient shiverings testified to a serious disturbance in all the animal functions. These shiverings were followed by a violent fever, the blood became inflamed, the breath hot, the respiration hurried and sometimes attended with slight coughing; when, if too violent a repercussion was transmitted to the nervous centres, the pressure on the vertebral line became intolerable, and the animal, seized with vertigo, and almost delirious with pain, would fall during this first period, as if struck by lightning.

The same phenomena are sometimes observed in the typhoid fever of man, which offers moreover some analogy with the contagious typhus of the ox; but as the ox and the horse have likewise the real typhus fever, they may some day supply us with the preventive virus for that fever, in the same manner as the cow now supplies us with the preventive virus for the small-pox.

2nd Period.– In most cases the disease pursued its course with greater or less regularity; the sick animal experienced gnawing pains or twitchings, and spasmodic shootings in the limbs, apparently attended with pain. His thirst was insatiable, but he had no appetite, the functions of the bladder and intestines were impeded, then diarrhœa supervened, accompanied with dry, fetid, and sometimes bloody excreta. Thick viscid mucosities dripped from the nostrils, mouth, and eyes. The dorsal regions and the loins were constantly aching, headache and sleeplessness were permanent. The animal continued either standing or lying down, and if he wanted to rest, he could not bend himself gradually, but would fall like an inert mass to the ground.

3rd Period.– Diarrhœa was continual, becoming more fetid every day, the wasting of flesh made rapid strides; the cellular tissue beneath the hide was filled with gas along the vertebral channels and under the abdomen; the nostrils were stopped up with mucosities, the animal could only breathe through the mouth, puffing and blowing aloud as he drew in the air; and at last pustular eruptions showed themselves on various parts; but as this depurating crisis was insufficient, the poor beast, in this final period of the attack, fell a sacrifice to it between the seventh and twelfth day. If he chanced to be lying down his agony was slow, but if standing, he would sink upon himself, and expire at once.

In this dreadful epizootia, very few of the smitten cattle survived – not more than four or five in a hundred; and in these favourable cases, the symptoms presented certain signs and critical phenomena of a happy omen. In these rare exceptions, the pulse did not exceed seventy, the beatings of the heart were always perceptible, the patient did not refuse to drink, the continuous fever exhibited no aggravation at night, pustular eruptions and tumours appeared on the dewlap and the fore limbs, and the epidermis over the mouth and nostrils peeled off about the twelfth day.

When dissected, the bodies offered to view the following alterations, the same having already been observed by Frascator during the prevalence of the epizootia in 1514, and by Lancisi and Ramazzini during that which was so fatal in 1711. The mucous glands of the mouth were livid, and occasionally excoriated; the bronchial tubes were obstructed with mucosities; the lungs, besides being partially congested, were sometimes emphysematous, that is, inflated with compressed air. Of the four stomachs, the rumen was full of food, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum exhibited purple or livid spots, according to their place. The thin intestine and the thick intestine showed either a general injection, scattered livid spots, or ulcerations, according as the fever had worn the exanthematous or typhoid form; for the mucous membrane of the digestive channels, and especially that of the intestines, displays, like the external tegument in man and the brute creation, divers forms of inflammation, analogous with the measles, the scarlatina, and the small-pox; so that, if the typhoid fever in man, which is nothing else than the small-pox of the intestines, is so frequently cured, it is because the general morbid condition, the fever, often conceals different intestinal lesions, albeit they seem to be similar in the general symptoms, which taken collectively constitute the disease.

The flesh of these diseased animals was blackish, and devoid of blood; the animals which fed upon it, if uncooked, sickened afterwards, or died. The wrecks of the bodies, and more particularly the skin, sometimes retained a strength of contagion so deadly, that the mere exportation of them was enough to cause its propagation, and to this cause was at that time attributed the outbreak of the contagion in England.

An extraordinary case of this pernicious influence, which is related by Hartmann, who observed this epizootia at its decline in 1756, will give an idea of the subtlety of this malignant virus.

A farmer who had lost an ox in consequence of that virulent distemper, buried it in one of his fields. The following night a bear smelt the ox, raked it up with his feet, ate a portion of the flesh, and a few days after, the beast of prey was found dead in a neighbouring wood by a peasant in the parish of Eumaki. The skin belonging to this bear was magnificent. The peasant flayed the animal and carried home his skin in triumph. But his triumph was short; for that same night the poor countryman fell ill, and died two days after the attack. The magistrates of Wiburg, having heard of this occurrence, sent orders to have the infected skin burned. Meanwhile, the skin had been given to the curate of the place as a compensation for the offices of burial; but his cupidity having persuaded him that this fine skin could not have destroyed the peasant whom he had just buried, he did not burn it at all, but induced another peasant to clean and dress it for him. This simple fellow and two other clodpoles, who assisted him in the preparation, fell ill, and all three of them died in the course of a few days. A new and peremptory order now came from Wiburg to burn this skin, to burn the house in which it had been dressed, to burn even the presbytery itself, should it be deemed necessary. The skin had already passed through several hands. However, the curate being still reluctant to part with it, took it home again. "Can it be possible," said he to himself, "that this skin has really proved fatal to life? What can have been the cause, I wonder?" At the same time he rubbed it in his hands and smelt it. Unlucky curate! A few days afterwards he himself was taken ill and died. (Memoirs of the Academy of Stockholm.)

A native of Clermont Ferrand, in the department of Puy de Dôme, in France, the birth-place of Pascal, one day finding an ox which had died of the epizootia, stripped off the skin and carried it away. After his return home, the black typhus, and then gangrene, broke out on one of his arms, which had to be cut off, and the patient died of the effects of the amputation.

A butcher having slaughtered an ox smitten with this typhus, sold the flesh for meat to some soldiers of the Regiment Royal Bavière, then garrisoned in one of the towns of Languedoc. All those who partook of this meat were seized with diarrhœa, dysentery, and fever, and several of the sick soldiers very nearly died. The butcher, whose avarice had caused all this mischief, had richly deserved some exemplary punishment, and some of the sufferers proposed that he should be hanged outright, but the majority, more clement, sentenced him to be beaten black and blue with horsewhips.