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

This last characteristic, when well understood, ought in reason to induce us to have recourse to the preventive treatment, and such has been the case with respect to the most virulent amongst them – small-pox and the typhus of the ox.

Prompted by these principles, which are as logical and fixed as any mathematical deduction, I suggested in 1855 that inoculation should be applied in typhoid fever, which is nothing else but the equivalent of intestinal small-pox, in order to prevent the disease in men. But if the simplest truth sometimes requires a contest of ages before it is heard and understood, I could not hope to fix attention on a fact which might be taken as problematical. I felt that I was outrunning time, and that I should neither be heard nor understood; and so it has proved.

Be that as it may, these typhous diseases have, as is seen, their laws and foreseen development. They attack animals generally, but chiefly herbivorous animals, endowed, as we have shown in the first part, with a vital resistance which is, relatively speaking, very inconsiderable.

These febrile typhous diseases (whether their development is caused by a spontaneous morbid action in the patient or by an evident contagion), have a period of incubation during which the vital strength undergoes latent morbid modifications, though not sufficient to indicate, save in times of epizootics and epidemics, the particular form which is about to reveal its symptoms in the course of a few days. This period of incubation being over, the mouth and chest become affected, and fever declares itself; and then the materies morbi, which is to become the special and dominant characteristic of the distemper, is directed either to the skin, or to the digestive mucous membrane. In the first case, we see evidence of exanthematic diseases, which present only the lightest forms of detersive disorders, such as measles, scarlatina, or that more serious one, from its pustulous form, the small-pox. In the second case, the elimination takes place from the intestinal canal, and then we see produced in animals, as well as in men, the typhous diseases: that is to say, the typhoid fever – a pustulous and ulcerous malady of the intestines – or the common typhus of the hospitals, prisons, and campaigning armies; and again, in animals, there is also the typhus of the steppes, of the marshes, &c.

The Eastern pestilence, the plague of Rome in the age of Antoninus and the plague of Athens, which might have given to Hippocrates the right of treating with Artaxerxes as one potentate treats with another, ought perhaps to be classed among those typhuses not subject to recurrence.

As for the cholera, it seems to be a contagious and epidemic disorder, of a distinct and particular kind. We are ignorant of its essential cause, its nature, and its mode of treatment; and although it has prevailed in every age, and even frequently of late years, it will always, by reason of the strange formation of our medical institutions, find us as weak and defenceless to resist its attack as we have ever been.

If we have been properly understood, typhous diseases are, above all, general febrile affections. At one time the materies morbi, or discharge, affects the skin; at another, the digestive mucous membrane. When it acts upon the skin, as clinical observation shows, there is sometimes a sort of hesitation in the eruptive process; people wonder what disease is coming forth; the eruption wavers in the form it will assume, till at length its real character is determined. The same uncertainty prevails when the intestines are affected. Sometimes the exanthema is merely the equivalent of simple measles or scarlatina of the intestinal mucous membrane, and many typhoid fevers of short continuance are nothing else in their nature. The same occurs in common typhuses. Sometimes the local affection proceeds as far as pustulous eruption, sometimes only to exanthematic rubefaction; hence the various alterations which we have witnessed in the intestines of cattle killed in our presence at the slaughter-houses of the Metropolitan Market, and which we ourselves dissected. The experienced Professor Bouley, from the Ecole Vétérinaire of Alfort, near Paris, whose visit must have been beneficial to England, clearly recognised in an ox which was slaughtered and dissected at the Metropolitan Market, the genuine pustule of typhoid fever. But in most cases, as we shall show, it is the other forms which prevail.

We make these observations in order to anticipate the objections of those reasoners who, being more influenced and guided by the local facts and by the symptoms, than by the general phenomena of comparative pathology, might argue that such or such fact is opposed to our doctrine.

In a word, then, typhous diseases have their types; but the living being is subjected to so many different influences, hereditary, idiosyncratic, climataic, hygienic, &c., that by the side of one subject going through the course of morbid phenomena with fatal regularity, another may be seen in which such or such functional derangement is readily distinguished. Thus in some animals, predisposed thereto by prior disorders, the morbid action originally propelled towards the channels of respiration will continue to be most salient; and after dissection the lungs will be congested and emphysematous, and the intestines relatively but scarcely altered. The animal, indeed, though bordering on typhus, will sink under the effect of functional derangement in the breathing passages. In others, by the influence of some particular predisposing cause, disorders of the nervous centres will be signalized; a cerebral and spinal pains will be intolerable, delirium will quickly ensue, and the asphyxiated patient, if a man, will succumb in the course of a few days; or if an ox, he will be wild and ungovernable, and then fall as if thunderstruck, fastened to his stall. Finally, in other cases, these first two phases of the distemper will not prove fatal, the intestinal injuries will pursue their course, and the affected animals will not die until the third period.

As we have seen, the morbid phenomena may be different, although the affection continues the same; the typhoid fever or the typhus being nevertheless the essential disease which prevails.

These generalities, to some readers, may appear irrelevant, but let them not be mistaken; they have a claim to our notice, and are really important. They show, indeed, that independent of the preventive treatment, which is an absolute rule in the case of virulent, contagious, and non-recurring diseases, the treatment of the disease itself, when it has declared itself, and when it pursues its course, cannot be the same for every patient; and that, moreover, this treatment must vary in the different phases of the disease, as physicians and veterinarians are well aware.

These generalities, likewise, explain the various diseases – viz., those in which the animals blend together the typhous and exanthematic diseases. The measles and the scarlet fever, affecting the external or internal membranes, are like the first steps of these maladies; they are generally slight, and we have but to watch over the progress of the symptoms, and to assist nature, which, with few exceptions, brings all things to a favourable issue.

These disorders, which are relatively slight and do not provoke in the economy any of those changes which in some sort transform the constitution, are not absolutely proof against relapse. They lead us rationally and by degrees to the more infectious and contagious diseases, to the common typhus; therefore it is unnecessary to apply the preventive treatment to them, that being exclusively reserved for the latter.

Let it then be well understood, that the typhus of the ox, the study of which we are about to enter upon, may vary in its symptoms and post-mortem appearances, without losing thereby the characteristic mark which renders it a thoroughly distinct, and, in the present day, a thoroughly well known distemper.

Now that the reader possesses these general notions of the Contagious Typhus, we shall be able to speak to him in a language which he will understand, and give a definition which he will be able to judge and appreciate.

The typhus of the ox, then, is a virulent, contagious, febrile, and non-recurring disease, with stupor and derangement of the nervous, respiratory, and digestive functions; leaving various changes in the respective organs of these functions, and chiefly in the intestines.

This new definition seems to us to be more faithful and just than those hitherto given; and this, if needed, we could demonstrate.

I do not disguise from myself that some of the opinions expressed in these generalities may, at first sight, appear strange and liable to objection. Thus, it may be argued that inoculation as a preventive treatment of typhous maladies is far from being a general law, applicable to every case; since in Russia, for instance, where this inoculation is practised every day, it completely fails in certain foreign herds, and they die of the consequences of the operation; and that this, therefore, might happen in England.

To these objections we would reply, first, as regards the novelty of opinions expressed, that we have taken up the pen, because we had to write something different from what has already been published in known works, otherwise it would have been our duty to remain silent; and secondly, as regards the inefficacy of inoculation, that organic and vital phenomena have their principles and their laws, which are fixed and invincible, from which it is reasonable to deduce consequences and positive rules of conduct, which cannot yield to superannuated opinions or imperfectly executed experiments. To institute experiments indeed under the rigorous conditions of a logical and irrefutable demonstration, is not so easy a matter as may generally be thought.

For our part, the principles deduced from strict observation are the basis on which we build, and if it so chance that we are baffled in our experiments we vary them indefinitely; and if still we are deceived in our hopes, we ascribe the miscarriage to our impotence, to inadequate means, and to the defective instruments which the physical and chemical sciences, still in their cradle as regards organic matter, supply for our use. Above all, we wish it to be remembered – "Scribo nec ficta, nec picta, sed quæ ratio, sensus, et experientia docent."

CHAPTER II

The Origin and Causes of the Ox Typhus

I

I have drawn my conclusions as to the preventive treatment of typhus in the ox, from the knowledge I had acquired of its morbid phenomena, its nature, and its non-recurrence; and it is a logical deduction quite as accurate as could be the result of a syllogism. The study of the origin of this typhus, and of the causes by which it is generated and spread abroad, will supply us with additional arguments to sustain this deduction, as well as those signs and indications which are the very foundation of curative treatment. The description of the disease will contribute to the same result; for the rational treatment of a distemper can be derived only from a knowledge of all the phenomena which occasion it, of the functional derangements, and of the alterations observed in bodies after death.

I wish particularly to say at once, in entering upon the subject of etiology, that the special works which treat of it contain precise information as to the causes and origin of the typhus in horned cattle; and that the chief organs of the press in every country – those ephemeral encyclopædias in which unfortunately so much vital force and intelligence are dissipated – have published articles of the highest interest on this subject. It would be physically impossible for me to begin again a bibliographical labour similar to the one exhibited in the First Part, in order to afford due justice to each of these public writers, who have met the epizootia on the confines of their country and fought hand to hand with it. This work is not susceptible of so much enlargement. Let it be well understood, that I claim no other merit than that of discussing these questions of etiology, in that order and with that common sense which fix ideas firmly in the mind – which, if I may use the term, photograph them on those parts of the brain allotted to the memory and judgment; also of drawing from known and admitted facts more rational and practical conclusions than those which have been current up to the present time.

Much has been already said and argued on the origin of the contagious typhus which affects the ox; some adhering exclusively to the special conditions observable in the breed of those oxen which are reared and fed on the steppes of Russia and Hungary; others, more reasonably, as it seems to us, ascribing it to the hygienic conditions generally, that is to say, to the climate, the season, the feeding, &c., &c., amidst which these animals are living.

All these discussions upon what has been said and argued on this subject have been very useful. For, had it been rigidly proved that the oxen of the steppes, by some peculiar organization, carry within them those germs or physiological elements which at given times become the leaven of the distemper, and, at a subsequent period, the elements of the contagion, then, indeed, a fact of capital importance and prominent authority would have been established, and the attention of all men interested in these inquiries would have been exclusively concentrated on that particular race of animals and on those countries smitten with the curse, in order to arrest and confine the disease within its one and only focus.

The supporters of this theory, concerning the first circumscribed origin of the typhus, maintain that all the epizootics whose deplorable history we have given in the first part of this work, have had no other generative causes than the propagation of the complaint, born and begotten on the banks of the Wolga and the Danube, and subsequently conveyed to the different parts of the earth by the emigration of the cattle. And in this manner, too, they have accounted for the appearance of the typhus in South America, in Africa, and in Asia.

Since this doctrine on the origin of the typhus has been conceived and maintained by men of a high order of understanding, we must suppose that they had been struck and convinced by important facts and serious reasons; and as it would be unfair to oppose a plain denial to an opinion now so generally adopted, we are bound to say in what manner these authors justify their views, after which we shall endeavour to refute them.

The partisans of the circumscribed origin, who make it depend exclusively on the peculiar organization of the race of the steppes, have based their argument, peremptory and unanswerable as they imagine, on the prime fact, that it has always been possible to trace the diffusion of the typhus in a given country, to some sick animal of the steppes conveyed to that kingdom. In this manner it is, that they explain the generation of the epizootics which have so frequently wasted the continent of Europe. On whatever point of the globe they may appear, this, and only this, is the source of their existence. The isolated position of Great Britain is made to support their arguments. "Behold," they exclaim, "Great Britain, which, thanks to its surrounding seas, has escaped most of the epizootics which have desolated France and Germany during the early part of the nineteenth century." Nay, more, the present visitation of the distemper is also seized upon to sustain their theory, since certain oxen, natives of the steppes, appear to have imported it into London.

We must add, that nothing is wanting in order to prove this assertion; for they relate with perfect regularity, and step by step, the course taken by the contagion; they specify the time occupied on its passage, and even the names of the infected vessels which have thus imported the principle of the typhus.

It must be admitted that all the facts thus stated are indisputable; we acknowledge as true, that the bovine race of the steppes has conveyed into other countries the contagious germs of the disease; we admit that its dissemination may be thus accounted for.

But to admit this fact, and to draw from it the conclusion that the bovine race of the steppes alone is capable, by some particular and distinct organization, of developing the original typhus of the ox, and that this typhus has no other focus on the earth than the banks of the Dnieper and the Don, does not appear to us a sound logical deduction. And as, if this conclusion were positively recognised, we might see but one side of the evil, and deduce very serious consequences therefrom, it is necessary to receive these facts for what they are worth, and no more.

Let us first observe, that those writers who ascribe the contagious typhus to the race of Southern Russia, do not take into consideration the epizootics of this typhus, the account of which has been handed down to us by the ancient authors of Greece and Rome; and that they refer just as little to those which are quite as frequent in the republics of South America as on the banks of the Dnieper. For even if we allow that once, and only once, one of these epizootics may be traced to the arrival of a ship containing oxen brought from the steppes, how, on the other hand, can we believe that all other epizootics have had such a fortuitous cause to generate it; consequently, the typhus, in these cases, must have been locally developed and diffused among American cattle?

Moreover, we seek in vain for the reasons which would authorize us to assign to the bovine race of the steppes a particular organization, rendering it alone fit to engender the typhus. But let us grant for a moment, that the Russian and Hungarian oxen constitute a peculiar race, as their framework and the length of their horns would seem to imply; this much being conceded, it still remains to be shown in what respect their anatomical and physiological structure differs from that of other animals to such an extent as to render them alone liable to originate this fatal typhus.

Oh! if it were true that the bovine race of the steppes alone could engender the typhus! we would hail the fact with joy, and would show without much exertion of reasoning that, in that case, we possessed not only the means of preventing the disease by inoculating sound and healthy cattle, but the far more important means of sweeping it for ever from the earth, by at once exterminating that cursed race, smitten with the original predisposition of this plague; and as, after all, the murderous scourge of the typhus of the steppes has already cost, and may perhaps continue to cost the various nations of the Old World millions upon millions, they would feel that their most urgent interest would be to come to an understanding (nor would the sacrifice be too much for their resources) so as to destroy and extirpate the evil at its original source. There would then be no difficulty in raising up a new breed of cattle in those countries, by transporting to it those of other nations free from the infection.

But who does not understand that this heroic sacrifice would be illusory, and that the foreign races, modified in time in this new medium, would regenerate the typhus; so that the double sacrifice of extermination and indemnity would have been made to no purpose?

We wish we could adopt this hypothesis, so simple and so consolatory, of the circumscribed origin of the typhus, and its exclusive propagation through the race of the steppes; but our mind is altogether opposed to that view, and for the following reasons, amongst others: —

If the bovine race of the steppes alone could produce the typhic virus, by reason of a particular organization which is the prime condition of its existence, this race alone would of necessity be fit to receive its taint by the influence of contagion. But if the other animals of the same species, as unfortunately too surely happens, can receive the principle of the disorder, develop the ailment, and die of its effects, then the reasoning of our opponents is faulty from its source; and it must be admitted that all horned cattle are apt to generate the typhic virus in those countries which afford the conditions of its production, and that this exclusive predisposition as it is called, attributed to the race inhabiting the steppes, is simply a chimera.

But arguments are seldom exhausted even to defend a bad cause, and it is objected that the fact that all oxen may contract the typhus transmitted by the contact of animals from one to another, does not prove that the original predisposition is the same in every race; and they persist in maintaining – 1st, that the typhus of the steppes is alone able originally to beget the disease; 2nd, that having thus begotten and produced it, it becomes, after this organic conception, apt to be transmitted to every animal, and fit to be assimilated with them.

To these subtleties and argumentative refinements it would be as easy for me to oppose abstract reasonings equally strong, as it would have been for the Jansenists and Mollinists, had it so chanced that they had been drawn into a debate on the origin and nature of the virus of the plague which carried off Jansenius. But let us confine ourselves to serious facts and conclude —

1st. That we have no proof of any anatomical and physiological difference in the humours or in the blood – that is to say, in the organic, intimate, and biological elements of the individuals which collectively constitute the bovine species.

2nd. That we have a right to believe, that all horned cattle are apt to develop the typhic virus when they are placed within the conditions required for that effect – that is to say, when they are exposed to the special morbific causes which form its condition sine quâ non, and which are met with on the banks of those great rivers which water Southern Russia and Hungary, in Africa, on the banks of the Nile, in South America, on the margins of the lakes, and in what are called hot climates, &c.

II

But if the origin of the typhus cannot exclusively depend on the peculiar organization of certain individuals of the bovine species, we must inquire after and search for the real causes which produce it.

We have explained already, in the First Part, what alterations organic matter undergoes in general, when accidental causes happen to modify its organic elements; and we have pointed out the fact, that of all living creatures herbivorous animals were those that offered the least vital resistance to the causes of disease and destruction.

This unquestionable fact being taken for granted, let us now consider under what conditions live the multitudinous herds of horned cattle which in Russia and in South America are reared and supported solely for the produce of their flesh, and sometimes, too, for that of their hides.

The great breeders and proprietors fix the number of their heads of cattle according and in proportion to the quantity of the pastures, but like other men, they mortgage the future for their benefit without making due allowance for accidents or extreme changes of weather, as when years of unusual drought succeed those of heavy rain; so that these herds, by the single fact of these extreme fluctuations in the degrees of temperature, are exposed to a multiplicity of causes productive of disease. The same nature which generates life and health generates disease and dissolution, and when the former are neglected the latter will prevail.

In the prosperous and favoured countries of the temperate zone, such as England and France, these extreme variations in the seasons, which are always the cause of a deficiency or alteration in the production of fodder, are equally the cause of the numerous epizootics which attack all the herbivorous species, and particularly those to which oxen fall victims, such as the tumourous typhus (le typhus charbonneux), the so-called aphthous fever, the contagious peripneumonia (which is not liable to return and is prevented by inoculation), parasitical cutaneous disease.

But in less favoured countries, in those which are damp, argillaceous, swampy, inundated by the overflows of their lakes and rivers, or by the reflux of the sea, there is deposited a slimy or brackish water, which a temporary torrid heat afterwards causes to ferment; and then a superabundance of life, a teeming vegetation, springs up in all directions. In the midst of this swarming vitality live and thrive an infinity of worms, maggots, animalculæ, insects, mollusca, fish, reptiles, birds, &c.; and here, too, all these creatures die and decay, when this slime, the prolific source of generations which we might look upon as spontaneous, begins to dry up and disintegrate. Then from these organic vegetable and animal matters, in a state of decomposition, escape those deleterious gases, such as hydrogen, carbonic oxide, nitrogen, carbonic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, and even phosphoretted hydrogen.