Symptoms.—In from three to six days after au animal has been exposed to the virus of cattle-plague, or about 36 to 48 hours after being purposely inoculated, the tempera ture of the body is raised by several degrees. A delicate thermometer introduced into the vagina or rectum, instead of marking about 102° F., indicates 104° to 106'. As yet the appetite, secretion of milk, breathing, and pulse are scarcely if at all affected, and but for the elevation of temperature, accompanied sometimes by dullness, the animal might be supposed to be in the best of health. Two or three days later, or usually within six or eight days after the beast has taken in the subtile virus, the mucous mem brane of the mouth is generally observed to be slightly reddened, and soon a granular yellowish-white eruption, consisting of thickened epithelium cells and granules, appears on the gums round the incisor teeth, and by and by on the lips and dental pad. Some hours later, the same eruption extends to the cheeks, tongue, and hard palate. Within 48 hours, or about the sixth day of attack, a crust of epithelium covers the gums, lips, and mouth, and when wiped away, or accidentally rubbed off, leaves the abraded mem brane red and vascular, and exhibiting patches of erosion. The membrane lining the vagina indicates very similar appearances; it is reddened and vascular, dotted with grayish translucent elevations about the size of rape-seeds, covered with a whitish-yel low, usually sticky discharge, and occasionally marked with patches of excoriation. The skin, like the mucous surfaces, is congested; there is hence a perverted develop ment of scarf skin, and of the oleaginous secretion of the irritated sebaceous glands. The skin is thus invested with a furfuraceous desquamation; whilst on its thinner portions about the lips, between the thighs, and on the udder, there are papular eruptions orele vations. About two, or even three days after the temperature has been increased, and usually one, or even two days after the appearance of the characteristic eruption on the gums, the constitutional symptoms present themselves. The animal is dull, hangs its head, arches its back, the eyes are leaden and watery, and from both eyes and nose there latterly comes a dirty slimy discharge. Appetite and rumination are irregular, and in dairy cows, the secretion of milk rapidly abates. The breathing. especially towards the sixth day, is oppressed, expiration is prolonged, and accompanied by a peculiar grunt. The pulse is small and thready, and quickened as death approaches. The bowels. usually at first confined, become, towards the sixth or seventh day, much relaxed; the discharges passed, often with pain and straining, are profuse and liquid, offensive, acrid, pale col ored, and occasionally mixed with blood. The patient loses weight and strength, totters if it attempt to walk, and prefers to lie rather than to stand. Death usually occurs about the seventh day, and is preceded by muscular twitchings, a peculiar sickly-, often offensive smell, a cold clammy state of body, moaning, grinding of the teeth, and rapidly increasing prostration.
Prognou8.—Cases usually terminate unfavorably when about the fifth or sixth day the animal temperature falls rapidly; the pulse becomes small, quick, and weak; the breathing more difficult, distressed, and moaning; the diarrhea increased; and the depression more notable. A more favorable termination may be anticipated when, after the fifth day, the heightened temperature, so notable even from the earliest stages, abates gradually; the breathing becomes easier; the pulse firmer; the visible mucous mem branes appear healthier; and patches of extravasation or erosion speedily disappear.
Sheep do not take rinderpest spontaneously, and even when kept with diseased cattle, or inoculated with cattle-plague virus, they do not catch the disease so certainly as cattle do. When diseased, they exhibit, however, very similar symptoms, but professor Mil,
and other observers, record that upwards of 40 per cent recover. Goats, deer, ante lopes. gazelles, yaks, and indeed all animals taking rinderpest, exhibit with tolerable uniformity the same characteristic symptoms.
Post-mo•fon Appectrances.—The mucous membranes are generally- deeper colored than natural, are congested, softened, marked in places with the same granular patches discoverable during life within the mouth and the vagina, and in bad eases exhibit oedema, hemorrhage, and sloughing. The first three stomachs sometimes contain a good deal of food, but show less declension from health than the fourth stomach, of which the mucous membrane is dotted with spots of congestion and extravasation. The coats of the bowels are thinned and easily torn. The mucous coat, especially towards the middle of the small intestines, the opening into the etreum, and posterior half of rectum, is much congested, bared of epithelium, and sometimes ecehymosed, but never ulcerated. Peyer's glands, so generally inflamed in the somewhat analogous typhoid fever of man, are perfectly healthy. The liver, spleen, ant] pancreas seldom present any special appearances. The respiratory mucous membrane, like the digestive, is vascular, and marked with sulamicous hemorrhage; the lungs are generally emphysem atous, the heart often marked with petechial spots. The urino-genital, like the other mucous membranes, is congested in females, especially towards the lower part of the vagina and vulva; the kidneys are sometimes rather softened, the serous membranes and nervous centers are perfectly unchanged. Dr. Beale, by his microscopical obser vations, discovers in the capillaries a great increase of nuclear or germinal matter, and white blood-corpuscles, which he believes may account for the local congestion. The blood itself is dark in color; in the later stages it contains less water, probably owing to the draining diarrhea, and about double its usual proportion of fibrine. The muscular tissues are softened, easily broken down, and contain an abnormal amount of soluble albumen. The urine is little altered in quantity, but from the first rise in the animal temperature, it contains an increase of urea varying from 5 to 15 per cent. The chief change in the milk is its rapid diminution in quantity, and the increase of its fatty matters. The bile is watery, offensive, and prone to decomposition.
Treatinent.—Cattle-plague is proved to be an eruptive fever. When the specific poison, on which such disorders depend, has entered the body of a susceptible subject, no remedy has yet been discovered which can destroy it, or even materially shorten or mitigate its effects. Until such an antidote is found, there can be no hope of certain cure. The cattle-plague commissioners have collected information regarding the four following methods of treatment—namely, the antiphlogistie, the tonic and stimulant, the antiseptic, and the special. Diverse as are these systems, the percentages of recov eries. varying from 25.83 to 27.45, were so nearly alike, that it is fair to conclude that no one of the systems tried exercised any notable influence in checking the mortality. Partly, perhaps, from the varying virulence of the plague, partly from differences m the nursing and care bestowed on the animals, the proportion of recoveries has varied greatly in different localities. Up to the end of 1865, in Huntingdon they were only 4.668 per cent; in Norfolk they were 12.102; in Flint, 15.909; in Scotland, 19.889; whilst in Fifeshire they reached 24.552; and in Yorkshire, 29.731 per cent.