CATTLE PLAGUE, RINDERI'EST (Ger.), or STEPPE MURRAIN (Fr.. push- bovine). A conta gious eruptive fever or exanthema common among animals of the bovine species; sheep, goats, deer, and other allied species occasionally, however, catch it from cattle. Pigs. horses, carnivore, and man are immune to the disease. It occurs indigenously on the plains of western Russia and throughout Asia. whence it has at various times overspread most parts of the Old World. As in smallpox. scarlatina. and other eruptive fevers, an incubative stage, varying between two and twenty days, intervenes between the intro duetion of the virus into the system by either inoculation or contagion, and the development of the chara•teristh symptoms. These consist essentially of congestion of the mucous and cu taneous surfaces. with a sort of aphthons erup tion, and thickening, softening. and desquama tion of the superficial investing membrane. The disease rims a tolerably fixed and definite course. which is not materially altered by any known remedial measures. It seldom attacks the same individual a second time.
IlisToRY. The cattle plague has been recog nized for upward of a thousand :years. It ap pears to have destroyed the herds of the warlike tribes that overran the Roman Empire during the Fourth and Fifth centuries. About 810 it traveled with the armies of Charlemagne into France, and about the same period is also sup posed to have visited England. Several times throughout the course of every century it spread from the plains of Russia over the western coun tries of Europe, and is stated to have again visited England about 1225. Although causing every few years great losses on the Continent of Europe. the plague does not appear to have again shown itself in England until 1711. when it appeared at Islington, about the middle of .July, and was very destructive for about three months, but was again got rid of toward the end of the year. In 1744 it was in Holland, destroying there, in two years, 200,000 cattle; in Denmark, from 1745 to 1749, it killed 280.000: in sonic pro\ hives of Sweden it spared only '2 per cent. of the horned cattle. It made terrible
havoc throughout Italy, destroying 400000 ani mals in Piedmont alone, lu April, 1745, the plague was again imported into England. prob ably by sonic white calves from Holland. It continued its devastation for twelve years, but it is now impossible accurately to determine the losses it occasioned. in this third and fourth of its ravages s0.000 cattle were lured, and double that number are supposed to have died. In 1747 40,000 cattle died in Not tingham and Lancashire alone: while so late as 1757 30,000 perished in Cheshire in six months. In March, 1770, the disease was brought with some hay from Holland to Portsoy, in the Moray Firth, several cattle died, and others to the value of about £800 being destroyed. the further spread of the pest was prevented. By the wars which wasted Europe toward the close of tile Eighteenth and first eighteen years of the Nineteenth Century. cattle plague was spread widely over the Continent, and occasioned. wher ever it occurred, terrible losses. Since then, at short intervals, it has spread—always being traceable to its source on the Russian plains— over Poland. Hungary. Austria, Prussia, por tions of Germany, and Italy, and has extended to Egypt. The following are the records of its destructive career during this outbreak: To this total must be added 11,000 cases known to have been attacked unaccounted for, and upward of filt.000 healthy cattle slaugh tered to prevent the spread of the disease. Plagne was again imported into Hull in 1872. with cattle from Cronstadt: it spread into several districts of the East Riding, attacked 72 aid mals, 51 of which were killed and 21 died. In 1877 an outbreak took place in Germany. but by energetic measures was speedily suppressed without extensive losses. The most extensive losses, however. have oeeurred on the steppes of Russia, and in Turkestan, Persia, China. Japan, Java, Central Africa, and Bechuanaland. lit the Iast-named country 1,200,000 eattle died of plague. At the present time (1902) the dis ease is especially destructive in Asia and Africa.