Description of the Contagious Typhus of the Ox; its Symptoms, Course, Progress, &c.
I have already written the history of the typhus which affects the ox; I have shown and dwelt upon the signs and characters of typhus diseases generally, deducing therefrom the denomination and definition of that of the ox in particular; finally, I have described the causes which generate and diffuse it abroad.
Now, I must make known the various phases and alterations to which the disease is liable, and which, in the language of the medical schools, are called its symptoms and characteristics; its progress or course; its prognosis; its post-mortem appearances, &c. &c.
This examination, like those which have preceded it, will afford new foundations for medical practice.
Symptomatic Characteristics.—The typhus of the ox, like all infectious and contagious diseases, offers to observation four successive changes: 1st, a period of Incubation, during which the original structure is subject to internal and latent derangements; 2nd, a period of Initiation, during which the first evident signs of the disease are manifested; 3rd, a period of Endurance, during which the phenomena are fully developed; 4th, a period of Decline, or wasting atony.
These divisions and classifications, it will readily be conceived, are rather fanciful, for nature does not adapt herself to our methodical forms. Still we shall abide by them, because they have their relative and practical utility, and because they will afford to the practitioner suggestions more easily understood; and finally, because the organic changes are different at these various periods, which in their entirety constitute the typhus of the bovine species.
The description of those different phases through which the organism of cattle smitten with the contagion has to pass, has moreover been given in a masterly manner by the veterinary physicians of the different European countries, especially by those in which opportunities to observe it have been most frequent—that is to say, by the Russian, German, and French veterinary doctors, Jessen, Röll, D'Arboval, Gellé.
The English physicians of the 18th century, as we have already seen, were also in no respect inferior to those of our own time. Finally, Mr. Simonds, who published a very able Report on his return from his scientific exploration in Galicia, in 1857, and the skilful Professor Bouley, in his recent communications to the Académie de Médecine, in Paris, respecting his examination of the present cattle typhus in England, have described the disease with minute exactness, as we ourselves have verified on the various sick beasts which we have seen during the last two months.
1. Period of Incubation.—Several careful experiments, which have been cited in the historical division of this work, and numerous fortuitous occasions, have authorized us to assign a duration of nine or twelve days to the period of incubation, according to the general conditions of the epizootia, the manner in which the contagion is transmitted, and the former state of health of the affected cattle.
Thus an epizootia at the outset, either when it has become general, or when it is at its decline, does not always transmit typhic miasma of the same virulent intensity, nor does it always provoke in the frame a labour of incubation which is invariable. The contagion transmitted from animal to animal living continually in the same stalls or sheds is followed by an incubation more quick and active than that which results from a chance contact in the markets, or from a contagion produced at a distance, by the transmission of the miasmatic effluvium along the public highways.
Let us add to these considerations the relative state of each animal's health, and we shall then perfectly understand that the incubation must vary both in its continuance and in the characteristics of its manifestation. In some animals it scarcely betrays the derangements produced by its morbid operation: they preserve their appetite and their usual looks. A close and attentive observation would alone be able to distinguish some slight alterations in their way of living, in the regularity of their rumination and sleep. But in others, there is no mistaking a something irregular and unusual in their appearance and living; the vital state is no longer the same. Thus an animal which used to be cheerful and familiar becomes silent and solitary; it browses the grass with less eagerness and avidity; it lies down more frequently and longer; it lingers by the side of the hedge along the field, or it wanders about, here and there, with a listless look, and without any object. Others moan and complain, bellowing at intervals in an unusual manner, very expressive of languor and pain.
But apart from seasons of epizootia, the beasts too often exhibit these imperceptible shades of variety in their looks and actions for the attention to be struck by them; these changes, therefore, are almost always unnoticed.
However, the typhic miasma absorbed at the same time by the respiratory and digestive mucous membranes serves to modify the qualities of the blood, and secretly reacts on the nervous system; soon after, the animal exhibits more decidedly those changes which previously were hardly to be detected; his want of appetite is more marked, his sadness more obvious, and his attention fixes itself more slowly and carelessly on the objects which surround him. When he is in the shed, his usual food is found in excess of his wants, his thirst is much keener and more frequent, and a continual dejection and lowness of spirits or a transitory agitation disturb all his functions. When the farmers or graziers notice these premonitory signs for the first time they pay but little attention thereto; but if the contagion has found its way into their stalls and sheds they are no longer deceived by them, but begin to apprehend that in a day or two fresh victims will be added to the number.
2. Period of Initiation.—Soon the elaboration of the virulent miasma in the organic structure changes the quality of the blood and humours, the functions of assimilation and secretion are modified, the nervous centres receive vitiated organic elements and are disturbed in their physiological conditions, and the smitten animal displays that state of latent uneasiness which he is imperfectly conscious of by a general look of heaviness and stupor (Τυφος), which has suggested for this disease its name of typhus.
Indeed, the poor animal's eyes are fixed, the hearing becomes obtuse or indifferent, as may be seen in the sinking of the ears, those organs which are so sensitive, so contractile, and so vigilant in herbivorous animals. With the head hanging down and motionless, the neck stretched out, their forelegs open and spread, their buttocks drawn together and one of them completely lax, they seem to succumb beneath the weight of their bodies. In a word, the animal exhibits through its whole bearing a heavy sadness, a general dejection, which bespeak a great derangement in the whole structure. From this time, in the animals which are most seriously affected, the appetite ceases, the rumination becomes irregular and partial, whilst in some others the appetite and rumination are maintained in different degrees.
But the incubation of the morbid elements pursues its course, the alteration of the blood becomes general, and the circulation is increased and quickened. After this the fever interposes and stops the secretions, that of the udders is dried up, the mucous channels cease to flow, the mucous membrane of the mouth becomes whitish, the little glands situated on it are more permanent, especially in the circumference of the gums; the floor of the tongue and the larynx are inflamed, the mucous membrane of the cow's sexual organs is red and furrowed with livid streaks, the white of the eye is parched, and the skin feels alternately hot and cold, as well as the horns and hoofs.
Some of the sufferers have an external horripilation, transient shiverings are felt in the front and hind quarters and at the junction of the limbs with the trunk. Some pregnant cows near their delivery miscarry. In a word, at this period of irritation, the whole frame is at war with the typhic elements which besiege it, and which overcome the preservative power of the vital forces, and from this general disturbance arises an incandescent fever, which drains and stops all the secretions at their source.
These general symptoms are the first signs and warnings of functional derangements more significant, which may, however, vary according to the predispositions of each animal, and transfer their evolutions either to the nervous centres or to the respiratory mucous membrane, or to that of the digestive channels, in the inflammatory and febrile form of the contagious typhus. Such at least is what we observe in the typhus of 1865 in England.
The functional derangements, in truth, subordinate to and depending on the predispositions exhibited by the cattle, are far from being the same in all. In some, the nervous derangements predominate; in others, it is those of the respiratory, and in others, it is those of the digestive channels.
As in this period of irritation the nervous centres are more particularly affected, the animal suffers cerebral and rickety pains, a constant cephalalgia, which provokes vague anxiety; he is sometimes cheerful, sometimes wild and furious; he clenches his teeth and yawns, the muscles of his face spasmodically contract, the spine feels very sensitive when pressed, a burning and insatiable thirst comes on, the breathing is hurried, and the intestinal evacuations are suspended.
In this form the toxæmia appears to concentrate about the nervous centres—as is observed elsewhere at the outset of certain violent fevers, in the typhus and typhoid fever of man, for instance—and some of their number may perish the victims of these nervous disorders, and even fall as if struck with electricity. They die apparently from the result of the typhic poison; for at this second period, we do not trace in the nervous centres those injuries which might account for so sudden a death.
When the respiratory apparatus concentrates upon it the febrile congestion, the breathing becomes painful, accelerated, embarrassed, sometimes convulsive, and a deep, oppressive cough is heard from time to time. The animal, under the yoke of this oppressive uneasiness, turns his head from right to left, scents, and seems to question his flanks, where the seat of the disorder is; and then, whether the pulmonary affection is congestive or inflammatory or emphysematous, he may die of the consequences of obstruction to the pulmonary circulation and from the alteration of the blood, under the influence of a slow asphyxia, but only at the third or fourth period.
Finally, when the typhus localizes more particularly its morbid phenomena on the digestive channels, we discern local alterations on the floor of the tongue and the buccal mucous membrane, spots of livid red, leaving behind them ulcerations of greater or less extent and depth on different parts of the intestinal canal. In this form, which follows more regularly all the periods, constipation is obstinate at the outset, evacuation of the bowels takes place with difficulty, the fæces are hard and the urine scanty, the belly is inflated and sensitive.
Sometimes at this period of initiation, one of these three symptomatic forms—the nervous, the pulmonary, and the digestive—may predominate exclusively, so far as to mask the disease as a whole, and to constitute it a special malady. But in that case, it is only the exaggeration of the functional derangements which in their total constitute the typhus: for when the distemper pursues its course, these three principal centres of life are always affected in different degrees. Thus, not one of the cattle smitten with the typhus goes through all the phases of the disease, without suffering at a given moment in its nervous, respiratory, and digestive functions.
In this respect, the typhus of the ox presents an apparent analogy with the typhoid fever in man, although it is different. Consequently, the name of typhus fever given by some veterinary surgeons, is not altogether inapplicable to it.
3. Period of Duration.—At this stage of the disease, which may be said to extend from the fourth to the seventh day, the nervous derangements are confined to symptoms of uneasiness and sensibility along the dorsal spine; for those cases which exhibited more violent derangement in the nervous functions have proved fatal. In this period of the disease the breathing is more embarrassed, particularly when the pulmonary form of the disease prevails. The pulse, which is hard and frequent, indicates from forty to sixty pulsations; the beatings of the heart are more violent and audible; the mucous membranes, dry at the outbreak, recover their secretions, but these latter are endowed with irritating properties. Thus the eyelids, swollen and tumefied at the edges beneath the lashes, drip with a corrosive liquid, which soon marks its furrow along the chanfrin; the bronchiæ, the trachea, the nostrils, the salivary glands, exude a serosity which runs out of the nasal and buccal orifices. The exanthematic eruption having discharged itself through the digestive channels, constipation is followed by diarrhœa, rumination is completely stopped, the beast declines all solid nutriment, and pants for drinks,—for those especially which have a slight taste of acidity in them.
The derangements at this period pursue a rapid course—the breathing becomes more and more difficult, the skin is hot and dry, the hairs stiffen more and more, gases are developed in the cellular tissues beneath the skin, along the dorsal vertebræ, at the abdominal folds of the posterior limbs and under the abdomen, in the form of flat, uneven, crepitant tumours, which crackle when pressed with the hand; the diarrhœa becomes more liquefied and irritant, for then it is no longer a flow of droppings covered with mucus which is expelled, but secretions already putrid, sometimes reddish in colour, and attended with fœtid gases, which induce tenesmus in the rectum, and force up the tail. The animal grows perceptibly lean, his dejection is extreme, and cows which are with calf miscarry.
At night, the animal seems to have an increase of fever, sometimes of a remittent type, after which he becomes drowsy and lies down to rest himself or to sleep, if he can; but the difficulty of breathing, the abdominal pains, soon force him to rise again, which he cannot do without an effort.
4. Period of Decline and Sinking.—This stage is observed to extend from the eighth day to the twelfth or the fourteenth. The morbid functions pursue their course, for the disease has its regular phases and a successive variation of phenomena. The secretions, which a few days before were fluid and irritating, have undergone a change; they have become thick and purulent, they flow more slowly from the ocular mucous membranes, and also from the nasal and buccal, which are red and inflamed, and they already emit a fœtid smell. The dull tarnished eyes become hollowed, purulent mucus lodges within their orbits, the bronchiæ are stopped up, the breathing grows louder and more panting, the animal instinctively stretches his neck to ease it; the wasting of the flesh exposes the bones of the sacrum and coccyx, laying bare the vertebræ and the ribs; the emphysematous tumours are more extensive and crackling; the skin, less heated, wrinkles up and splits about the bony protuberances; the udders are crusty and excoriated; detached boils, hard and rounded at first, then soft and purulent, begin to show themselves on the trunk and the upper parts of the limbs. The diarrhœa, still frequent, becomes bloody and intolerably offensive.
At this final period the organic structure yields to the effects of a general alteration of the liquids and solids. The vital force has lost the power of reaction; a mass of blood, decomposed by the double influence of a virulent toxæmia and the obstructions of respiration, conveys to all the organs a principle of dissolution; the nervous system is in a manner paralysed, as is shown in the animal's insensibility.
The secretions stop up the various channels and cavities; they lodge within them; they undergo a putrid decomposition, and pass out with difficulty in the form of a purulent and bloody flux, in the highest degree infectious. Very soon the sick animal has ceased really to live; it struggles and labours with its agony; if the lungs are clogged with gas or fluid they rattle hurriedly and often; the animal cannot hold its head up even when lying down, and when standing moves it to and fro as if affected with the natural shaking of old age, and as if seeking to ward off some indescribable evil, the occurrence of which it was awaiting.
The animal's body is a prey given up beforehand to the laws of organic decomposition: the internal mucous membrane of the cheeks and lips peels off in strips when rubbed; the sores on the skin have a livid and gangrenous look; the eggs which the flies deposit on the edge of the eyelids and at the nasal orifices, or on the excoriations of the skin, quickly pass into the state of larvæ. The air they expire is cold and infectious; the native caloric, extinguished in every focus successively, disappears; the vaginal mucous membrane is tumefied, the anal opening gapes, and from it flows a bloody and decomposed liquid which the rectum can no longer expel. The mouth, half open and coated with a thick glutinous foam, vainly tries to inhale long draughts of air which can no longer reach the lungs. Finally, if the animal is lying down, he expires in slow agony, his head borne down by its own weight; or, if standing, he sinks and falls down, his death having anticipated the fall.
Such are the symptoms—the subjective signs which enable us to detect the contagious typhus of the ox. But all animals do not exhibit these disorders of the vital functions with the same regularity and excess. Some of these we have seen, from first to last, sustain the internal effects of the morbid process—in some sort passively—without revealing any deep derangements in the nervous, respiratory, and digestive functions. The poisonous virus had smitten them; they suffered in their general structure; they looked stupefied; they lost, at a given moment, their appetite and rumination; they had fever; their breathing had become short and frequent; they had diarrhœa; they gradually lost flesh, and the excreta passed through certain changes and transformations. In a word, the animal had manifestly the bovine typhus; but, thanks to a relative immunity, to a special organization, which renders some of these beasts capable of resisting the contagion for a long period, and sometimes altogether[O]—thanks to that variety which we observe in different constitutions (for small-pox and typhus in man, and the true typhoid fever in animals, do not operate with the same violence on all alike)—thanks to this privileged organization,—we have seen some oxen pass through every stage of the disease without exhibiting this terrible train of morbid phenomena.
In these cases—for even this mild form of the distemper at last produces death—the injuries fix themselves more exclusively on the digestive channels, and we witness, in dissection, ulcerations in some, in others mere spots of a livid red, more or less extensive.
Finally, although the typhus be one of the gravest maladies which destroy and decimate cattle, all sick animals are not mortally affected thereby. In the present epizootia, five per cent., as nearly as can be ascertained, recover; and when that happens, signs of a favourable omen are observable during the course of the attack. In these favourable instances, indeed, the symptoms, even though they exhibit a certain gravity, pursue a regular course; fever does not become remittent; the fæcal discharge is copious and easy, with less fœtor; the animal loses flesh slowly and progressively; the tumours are cutaneous, inflammatory; their character is good, depurative, and rather purulent than gaseous and crackling. The droppings do not show that high degree of pestilential decomposition described above; the animal in his drink welcomes and digests a mixture of bran and flour; the secretions of purulent mucus and the fæcal discharges dry up and stop in the early part of the period of decline; the epidermis of the openings through which they passed out peels off in thin scales, and afterwards in scurfs or husks—in a word, the economy does not experience those acute disturbances which strike one of the tripods of life—that is to say, either the nervous centres, the lungs, or the digestive organs.
Now, in these curable cases, in which the cure is most generally due to nature's own efforts, but which a systematic treatment might render far more frequent, the convalescence is long, and requires great attention and a well-regulated diet, in which the food is carefully measured and divided. Here there must be a rigid superintendence. A laxity in the watchfulness, or too much reliance on the reviving health, have produced sudden relapses, and been fatal to many sick cattle, which had been looked upon as thoroughly cured. For it may well be conceived that convalescent animals, after sustaining such violent derangements in their health, and having been brought down to the lowest degree of prostration and marasmus—to a reconstitution, we may call it, of the solids and liquids—have a devouring hunger. If, therefore, the keeper who looks after them unhappily forgets that the principal lesions or sores are seated in the stomach and intestines, and if he gives them too much solid nutriment, he impedes the cure, irritates the ulcerations not yet thoroughly covered over, and soon adds another victim to those which had already died.
This convalescence lasts from fifteen to twenty days, and the animal only recovers its health at last by slow degrees. Still the careful keeper need not be afraid of a relapse when he is patient and watchful.
Such, then, is the contagious typhus of the ox. Type of the unreturnable infectious diseases, its virulent miasms undergo within the structure a series of transformations: they produce in the frame a general disorder fully capable of annihilating the predisposition or aptitude of the animal to receive the taint. A disease essentially specific, it affects the principal centres of life; it kills its victim both by its deadly virus and by the local derangements to which it gives rise; for how is it possible to preserve life when the whole nervous system, that promoter and regulator of all the functions, is upset?—when the lungs which revivify the blood, when the digestive organs which are the very sources of alimentation, are smitten with stagnation?—when, in fine, not only these vital centres have ceased to operate, but when each by itself is the cause of torturing pains and exhaustion?
The typhus, moreover, is observed in all animals of the bovine species, whatever may be their race, their age, or their sex. The recovered animals may live with impunity amidst diseased herds of cattle, thanks to its non-relapsive nature. Jessen has even witnessed cows which, after their own cure, communicated a sort of immunity to their offspring. For the same reason it is that epizootias are less fatal in those countries where they often occur, the constitutions of those animals which are engendered amongst such habituated herds, preserving a prophylaxy inherent to the blood which has been transmitted to them.
Besides, what a pregnant subject is this for the physician, and what more meritorious task can he set himself than the treatment of such a distemper, which reason assures him must eventually lead to the cure and eradication of the same complaint in the human species?
From a cause which as yet has been indistinguishable and imponderable, what important, what marvellous results loom in the future! The air seems to us pure and wholesome, yet it conceals a typhic miasma of the most deadly kind; it carries this pernicious principle into the richest meadows, where we see feeding flocks and herds which to us seem exuberant with health. Then this miasma is inhaled and absorbed, and it meets in the frame the special and indispensable organic element which is needed for its multiplication; there it undergoes certain latent transformations, and a fermentation, a germination, which we call incubation, in order to explain a process which we cannot understand. Then fever is kindled, all the functions are disturbed, and the sick animal is struck down, leaving us wondering, ignorant, and powerless spectators in the presence of phenomena which, nevertheless, are the eternal work of nature and have endured through all time.—But if in the invisible typhic atom nature gives us death, it also gives us life in the zoosperma.
II.
Lesions found in the Bodies of Oxen after Death.
The description which we have given of the disorders produced in the different functions by the operation of the typhus, may easily suggest what must be the lesions exhibited by the organs of the body.
Death, we have said already, may overtake the disease at any of its periods, and thus show every aspect and every degree of the organic lesions. Such an animal being struck down at the period of initiation, will not, of course, present the changes and varieties of the period of decline, and vice versâ.
In general, the state of the dead bodies is that of the most decided marasmus; the remains are intensely repulsive, as well by the stench they emit as by the sight they afford; and, in summer especially, decomposition sets in with great rapidity. Consequently, the utmost care is required in conveying them from place to place; and this attention is the more essential, because in the transit, the cavities being deprived of their contractile power, let flow the pestilential liquids which they contain, thereby infecting the carriages and public roads. The urgent necessity there is to inhume at once these dead bodies, the most active agents in diffusing the contagion, is equally the drift of this observation.
The deceased animal, as a subject of anatomy, enables us to certify the seat of the emphysematous tumours, and to see that they are really due to the air which insinuates itself into the cellular tissue, and which, receding from the pressure of the fingers between the cells, produced the crackling sound we noticed above. This penetration of the air is, moreover, a far more general effect than was supposed.
It is ascertained, likewise, from the examination of these subjects, that the round, fluctuating, and smaller tumours, are indeed purulent gatherings, which occasionally find a passage into the layers and interstices of the muscles.
The muscular flesh is usually flabby, bloodless, unsightly, of a very nauseous smell; and it would be difficult to imagine that the most avaricious trickster would dare to offer even the most presentable parts of it for sale and consumption. But when the expedients and artifices known to the butcher's trade are had resort to, when, regardless of the public health, the unprincipled dealer selects the most fleshy parts, when he dresses and adorns them by colouring them over with the blood of a healthy beast, the unwary eye of the purchaser may be deceived. Observe, that we are now speaking of cattle that have died in the last stage of this marasmus, so that we might suppose, even if the many summonses before the magistrates, and the too moderate fines which have been imposed on the guilty parties, had not shed the broadest light upon the fact, that a large number of sick cattle which had been slaughtered at different stages of this frightful disease, have been dressed and adorned, exposed for sale, sold, and eaten by a very large portion of the inhabitants of London and of the country likewise.
Digestive Channels.—The mucous membrane of the buccal cavity is, for the most part, of a livid whiteness; ecchymosed stains, and sometimes ulcerations, differing in their form and number, are visible on the floor of the tongue. Mr. Simonds has had an anatomical model constructed, which presents a perfect type of these ulcerations, some of which are of a scarlet hue, with perpendicular edges. The stomachs exhibit a variety of ulcerations.
The paunch, or first stomach, always contains a large quantity of food intended for rumination; sometimes these aliments are dry, and lie sticking to its sides; at other times they are diluted with water which had not yet been absorbed after drinking. The inner membrane of this first reservoir may show flat spots, with livid injections of different sizes.
The honeycomb, or second stomach, generally exhibits the same injuries as the paunch.
The manyplies, or third stomach, contains between its laminæ hard, pulverulent, and dry alimentary substances, which are seen sticking to the different leaves. On removing these substances, some ecchymosed spots are laid bare, the epithelium of which easily peels off; sometimes ulcerations, and even perforations, are visible.
The reed, or fourth stomach, whose sides are thicker, more fleshy, and more vascular, exhibits within its folds various kinds of lesions or sores: they consist of large flat stains of a darkish red, more or less soft, and sometimes ulcerations red on their deep surface, with clean edges.
As for the intestines, properly so called, the duodenum shows the same injuries, but most generally large ecchymosed spots.
The small intestine appears on the outside, even when it preserves its place in the abdomen, of a reddish colour, lined with vessels distended with blood, the signs of a general congestion of its membranes. The examination of the mucous membrane, after it has been cut open lengthways, shows, indeed, that this portion of the digestive tube is the principal seat of the distemper; for, independently of this general injection, you perceive ulcerations which have succeeded to detached pustules or lengthy flat spots, the result of a cluster of several of Peyer's glands, brought together by the plastic influence of inflammation. These flat spots, or wafers, very similar to those we observe in the typhoid fever of man, are inflamed and ulcerated in different degrees.
The mucous membrane of the large intestine exhibits lesions depending on the period of the disease. About the third period, the injection is sometimes general, especially near the rectum; but in the fourth and last period we often meet with ulcerations which are smaller in the upper part, larger and deeper about the lower or rectal part. The membrane of the sexual parts of the cow is strongly injected, and of a dull red colour.
As we have seen, the different organs of the digestive apparatus may, in this typhus, offer to view extensive alterations perfectly consistent with the gravity of the symptoms or the functional derangements. In two cases in which disorders of the respiration had prevailed, and which had been sacrificed on the eighth or tenth day of the disease, we only observed partial injections of a very limited character, either on the gastric membranes or on that of the intestine, and which might have been detected in the case of common intestinal inflammation. Therefore, in these two cases, the characteristic lesions of the typhus, if they must be localized in the intestine, were, so to speak, absolutely wanting. It was, we will not say exactly the same, on four other animals, three oxen and one cow; but if, in two of them, the fourth stomach was inflamed, if in the third the small intestine was congested, and if, lastly, in the cow the large intestine showed ulcerations, we could not in these lesions distinguish those of typhoid fever.
These facts struck us with great surprise, for we were far from suspecting them. We hoped, on opening the intestine of these animals, which had certainly all died of the typhus, to meet assuredly in a determined spot some well-known lesion declared beforehand. To our great astonishment, such has not always been the case. So that our theories, conclusive as they seemed on the identity of the ox typhus and the typhoid fever in man, and which more than anyone else we wished to see confirmed, must submit to observation.
In fine, in this epizootia the intestinal lesions or sores present different appearances. Developed to the utmost in some cases, so much so as to exhibit ulcerations at the root of the tongue as well as in the intestines, and to be in a manner the excess of the injuries which are seen in typhoid fever, they are in other cases scarcely perceptible, and sometimes entirely absent, when the animal is struck down in the third or fourth period, that is to say, when the exanthematic or pustular state has had time to develope itself on the digestive channels. One of these animals seized by Mr. Tegg at the Camden Town market, was in such a state of exhaustion that he could not be driven to the slaughter-house, only two hundred yards distant; they were forced to fell him on the spot midway, in order to have him conveyed to the place of dissection. We only detected partial injections on the digestive tube of this beast. The pulmonary emphysema which had caused this animal's death was developed in the highest degree.—He was opened at the request of M. Bouley, of Alfort.
Apparatus of Respiration.—Here, again, the typhus shows us injuries which differ from those of typhoid fever; for if the breathing is always more or less obstructed at the outbreak of this fever, no serious organic change in the lungs is the consequence thereof. In the ox typhus, on the contrary, when the pulmonary form prevails, the derangements of the respiratory organs are remarkable. Thus, the mucous membrane of the nostrils, from which flows a purulent and fetid mucus, is sometimes ulcerated and excoriated. The larynx and the trachea or windpipe, choked up with frothy mucus, show the same alterations, though less frequently. The lungs, which are rather congested than inflamed, are emphysematous, the air having entered and distended the cellular tissue which unites the lobes together.
In some cases, the lungs are so gorged with air that their lobes constitute but a single heap, rendering them irrecognisable, so greatly do their volume, their specific gravity, and their spongy aeriform aspect differ from the natural state.
Apparatus of Circulation.—The inner sides of the heart show ecchymosed spots, and the same is the case with the larger vessels. The blood, diminished in its quantity and altered in its quality, is blackish and more fluid; but in most cases it coagulates instantaneously and in a mass, without separating into its solid and liquid parts.
Nervous System.—Having observed and dissected the dead bodies at the slaughter-houses of the markets, we were not able to examine either the brain or the spinal marrow. Besides, let us remark in this place, that the mode of felling cattle in England would have rendered impossible such an examination. For the animals are struck with a club, which kills them both by cerebral concussion and by the direct alteration of the brain; the instrument having a sharp end which perforates the skull and injures the cerebral lobes. Nor is this all; the moment the animal is struck down, a flexible rod is inserted into the hole made in the skull, and driven as far as the spinal canal, so as to tear to pieces the protuberance and the bulb, that is to say, the vital knot. This manner of killing cattle seems to us, however, preferable to the one adopted in France, where the animal does not sink till he has been struck repeatedly with the club.
But be that as it may, those authors who have examined the nervous centres of horned cattle which had perished victims of the typhus, have usually found the meninges, or membranes that envelope the brain, injected, whilst the brain itself was slightly dotted over with blood.
These anatomical lesions of the nervous centres being insufficient of themselves to explain the death at the second period, we have endeavoured to give the explanation of it in treating of the symptoms.
The other organs, the spleen, the liver, the kidneys, present alterations of a secondary interest only.
III.
Diagnosis—Prognosis—Use of the Flesh of Animals which have Died of the Typhus—Danger of direct Absorption.
The typhus of the ox has such distinct and strongly marked characteristics that it is not easily mistaken. However, to conform ourselves to received custom, I will say some words about the principal symptoms of some distempers affecting the ox, between which and typhus unprofessional persons might be embarrassed, and hesitate to distinguish them. We will transfer, however, those particulars pertaining to the diagnosis to the part written for the special use of agriculturists, farmers, and graziers, in order that they may readily find whatever it may be necessary for them to know when they chance to have any sick and tainted cattle to treat and cure.
We have likewise a few words to say on the subject of the prognosis of the disease, as regards its propagation and its time of lasting. Finally, we will unfold a question of very real importance in hygiene—we mean the use and consumption of the flesh of animals as food, and the danger which may accrue to man and other animals from contact with their dead bodies, or fragments of the same.
The diseases of the ox, which we are accustomed to consider as distinguished from typhus, are the contagious peripneumonia, the apthous fever, and the "charbonneux" typhus; but, as we have just said, we will mention by-and-by their chief characteristics.
Everyone is anxious, and natural indeed is that anxiety, to know what this epizootia will become—what will be its course; how long it will last; whether it will extend its ravages over the whole extent of the three kingdoms; and if, in fine, it will invade all Europe.
To answer in a precise manner these questions would be a difficult task; for who amongst us can assign at present any definite course to the atmospheric variations? and yet they have a genuine influence on the progress of the epizootia. On the other hand, the measures which have been taken hitherto to confine the contagion to its different foci, have unhappily proved almost ineffectual, but it may be hoped that, assisted by experience, we shall be able to resist the evil more effectually, and check its propagation.
If the atmospheric conditions and the preventive measures could not modify the spread of the distemper, we should have reason to dread a still greater extension of the contagion; for the virulent character of the epizootia appears to be of an exceptional intensity, and we may perhaps compare it with the famous epizootia, of the middle of the eighteenth century, which for ten years afflicted all Europe with its ravages, striking down six millions of horned cattle.
Let the reader cast an eye over the extracts borrowed from the physicians of the principal faculties who have described this typhus, and which we have reproduced in the first part of this book relating to its history, and he will then be convinced that the disease is absolutely the same as that which then raged so fiercely. And if that is the case, we must anticipate that it will extend its ravages whilst prolonging its duration. Already it has spread to Holland and Belgium; Hungary and other provinces in the south-east of Germany—a fact much less surprising—are likewise smitten with it; and now we hear the news that France, though so vigilantly on her guard, has seen her frontiers passed over. In spite of the cordon sanitaire which she had prudently established everywhere, some horned cattle have been seized with the typhus at the town of Raubaix, in the north.
Without setting ourselves up as pessimists, let us declare that we must expect that the contagion will continue to spread. Let us make up our minds to this, in order to take the necessary sanitary measures, and set ourselves seriously to work by trying the preventive treatment. But, alas! between the Government, the municipal corporations, the agricultural societies, the cattle proprietors, and, with regret we add, the veterinary surgeons, there has been sadly wanting, up to the present time, that mutual understanding; that prompt and decisive action, and those pecuniary advances which are so necessary to encounter and contend with this great calamity.
As for estimating with any approach to accuracy the sacrifice of property; the pecuniary loss, which this fatal epizootic may occasion the country, the want of exact statistics as to the number of cattle which have already been struck down will not permit us to do it. But we may, perhaps, already set it down approximately from 50,000 to 60,000 head of cattle for England and Scotland, until we have obtained more precise statistical information on this significant point of inquiry.
That would represent, however, a very considerable capital; for if we compute the loss of each animal at the average sum of 15l. only, the sacrifice already incurred would not be less than from 750,000l. to 900,000l. This sacrifice in money might possibly have proved the be all and the end all; and at this point we might, perhaps, have arrested the contagion, had we all been able to act advisedly and harmoniously together, in the name and for the interest of the public, from the first appearance of the disease. But this calculation of, let us say, 900,000l., is made on the supposition that each cattle owner had been willing to abide by his own loss; whereas, unfortunately, many of them have striven to shift it on others, and large numbers of the sick and tainted beasts having been sold and consumed, a proportionate sum thus recovered by those avaricious men must be of course deducted from this estimate. Deducted, indeed! Considering the consequences on the public health, is it not rather an aggravation than a mitigation of the loss?
These last assertions naturally lead us to inquire whether we are not justified in saying that the flesh of sick and tainted cattle, thus circulated and consumed, has not had its baleful effects on the public health.
The butchers who sold the flesh of these sick and tainted cattle have no doubt been careful to abstain from using it in their own families; and the first time they speculated on the health of their fellow-citizens, well knowing what they did, their conscience probably reproached them with the misdemeanour. But afterwards, when no bad consequences to their customers had been seen, their own impunity, joined to this apparent harmlessness to their neighbours, rendered them bolder, and it became a daily habit with them to sell this peccant offal, which poisons even the earth by its contact.
Moreover, the graziers themselves were in league with the butchers, and took care to slaughter the affected animals before the wasting of their flesh by the progress of the distemper had bereft them of their greatest value. Their private interest prompting them thus to dispose of the sick animals as fast as they could, the majority of the tainted beasts were sold and eaten in the second stage or period of the typhus.
Now, if the flesh of these diseased animals had been eaten raw, accidents most terrible and appalling would certainly have been the consequence, although dogs may have fed upon it without injury. But the cooking of animal flesh at 100 degrees of heat has the property of destroying for a time the septic germs, as the famous debates now being held by the experimentalists who are studying the subject of spontaneous generation tend to show. This poisonous meat, therefore, may at first have been digested without producing immediate ill effects.
Our medical practice, however, authorizes us to declare that, after making every allowance for the influences of this extraordinarily hot summer, digestive and nervous complaints of the acutest description, and without any special cause to account for them, have been very numerous indeed during the last two months, and beyond all proportion greater than they usually are in London. And we cannot but feel that, if the cholera should reach the shores of England at this critical conjuncture, it will find organisms most ready to receive its virus. Then, indeed, if the typhic miasma come to mix and blend with the choleraic miasma, all living beings will have to contend with the most deleterious causes of alterations in their health, and we may (God send it be otherwise!) witness one of those measureless calamities which, known in former ages as the Black Pestilence, decimated cattle and men indiscriminately, and which, when we read the sorrowful accounts of it in history, make the flesh creep with affright.
We sincerely hope that such misfortunes may be spared us. But ought we to abstain entirely and absolutely from consuming the flesh of cattle smitten with typhus? It is a delicate question, but still we shall answer it, making due allowance for every interest concerned.
We conceive that all animals which are smitten with the early effects of the disorder, which begin to operate at the opening of its second period, that is to say, when the first symptoms are declared, such as stupor, loss of appetite and shiverings, may be handed over to the butchers. But this must only be done on the positive understanding and condition that every animal, sick or not sick, in times of epizootia, shall pass, either in the farm, the market, or the stable, under the examination of a competent veterinary inspector, who shall mark the beast when fit to be sold for consumption. With this precaution, which at present is put in practice in Belgium, every interest is cared for and guarded—those of the public health as well as those of the cattle owners.
But there is another question of some importance which deserves to fix our attention for a moment. People sometimes inquire whether the ox-typhus can be communicated to other animals, and even to man, either by contact, by direct absorption, or by inhaling the miasma floating in the atmosphere.
Experiments of great interest might be made on this subject; but we can already assert, on the evidence of facts publicly known, that the direct absorption of putrid matter and purulent secretions, and likewise the mere contact with tainted flesh, when the epidermis or scarf-skin is cracked or peeled off, or when the least open sore exists, may give access to the disease, and produce death, both in man and other animals. In these cases, the absorbed virus operates, not as a specific agent, giving birth to typhus, but as a provocative septic agent, endowed with infectious properties, which infuse into the economy a germ of virulent and mortal disease. So long as a sound and intact outer skin stands as a safeguard between us and absorption, we may fearlessly touch and handle the tainted flesh of these animals. But the slightest sore or abrasion is an open door to let in death. A young veterinary surgeon, who had a slight wound in one of his arms, was carried off within forty-eight hours, as was proved at a coroner's inquest, after he had dissected an ox which had died of the typhus.[P]
We see by this fatal example that we must be particularly careful not to touch an ox tainted with typhus when we carry about us any open sore, unless we take the utmost precaution in order to guard against all direct contact or absorption. Man, as we have said and shown, breathes with comparative impunity an atmosphere laden with the infectious miasma of this typhus. But that which to-day is true may not be true to-morrow; let us, therefore, be also on our guard against the too continuous absorption of an atmosphere impregnated with these deleterious principles.
As for herbivorous animals in general, a similar organization must, in their cases, predispose them to receive the contagion. Whenever we visit the markets, we cannot help fearing to see the ox typhus communicated to the sheep and pigs which are stationed around them. It is an unquestionable fact that, in certain epizootias, all animals without distinction have been smitten and struck down, and the herbivorous animals more rapidly than any other. The habit of collecting such vast numbers of cattle in the same market, and on the same day, though convenient for business, appears to us injudicious, especially during the prevalence of this scourge.
This part of our treatise was in the printer's hands when Mr. Simonds wrote a letter to the Privy Council which justifies all our apprehensions. The typhus of the ox has been communicated to a number of sheep, and we must all expect to see this cruel disease assume much larger proportions than heretofore, since it has now obtained a second focus for its maintenance and dissemination.