In case of a recent importation the infection would be easily controlled. Trace at once to its destination every bovine animal and other ruminant that arrived on the infected vessel, and all that came in contact with them since, or with the gangways, wharfs, streets, highways, yards, houses, fields, cars, loading banks and other places and things that might have been contaminated; stop all cattle and sheep traffic or movement for a large area around each centre of possible infection caused by such cattle; remorselessly kill every head of such animals carried by such vessel, or that came in direct contact with them; bury, burn, boil or dissolve in mineral acids, every animal thus exposed; thoroughly disinfect the importing ship, and every house, place or thing the imported stock came in contact with, together with all the dejections and debris, and even the surface of the graves; make a census of all cattle within the different quarantined areas, and hold the owners or custodians responsible, under a heavy penalty, to report every death and every case of illness; whenever the cattle plague is found in a place dispose of the entire herd as has already been done with the infected imported stock, and in a very few weeks the plague can be completely extirpated. The violence of the individual attack, and the very short period of latency, makes the work incomparably easier than the extinction of lung plague. There is never a long period of uncertainty (incubation), there is virtually never a slight or occult case of the disease, there is no equivocal chronic form of the affection. The attack is made boldly and above board, and can be met successfully if met promptly and energetically. The danger in such cases lies, less in the nature of the disease, than in the army of foolish, even if well meaning, meddlers, who denounce the temporary interference of trade, the payment of indemnities to the cattle owners, the interference with private property, the destruction of valuable thoroughbred herds, the interruption of the dairyman’s business, the cost of disinfection, and a thousand other things, and who too often succeed in hampering and delaying action, until the infection has reached and spread over great unfenced territories thereby getting beyond control, or, short of this, has so established itself as to necessitate the outlay of a hundred thousand for every hundred that would have been demanded at first, and a long continued restriction of trade in place of the very transient interruption required by early, sharp, decisive action.
One of the most important prerequisites is that every state, but especially those on the seaboard and with ports of entry, should enact such laws as would make it possible for the Executive to act at a moment’s notice and to call in the help of the Federal Government to make an early and effective application of the only successful remedy. Most things can wait for the call, assembling and action of a legislature; the infection of cattle plague can not. Such laws are not superfluous. If never called for they still show a wise provision against a terrible, though remote, possibility; if really called for and they are not found ready, the great cattle industry and even the agriculture of the continent may be largely sacrificed by the neglect.
As guardian of the interests of The Philippines the United States is to-day called upon to consider the question of exterminating the disease which our interference brought upon the islands. On the unfenced lands of these islands we have to face on a smaller scale the problem of stamping out the plague which has baffled the wisdom of Europe and Asia. The individual islands may perhaps be taken independently, the cattle collected in small herds under fence, and by the sacrifice of a few the remainder of any herd that shows infection may be immunized, and the premises where they are confined disinfected until finally no more cases occur. But whatever method is adopted the seclusion of all within well fenced areas is the most important consideration. No nation has ever succeeded in extirpating this nor any other important infection in animals when they are allowed to run at large and mingle freely, herd with herd, on unfenced land.
PICTOU CATTLE DISEASE. HEPATIC CIRRHOSIS.
This is a fatal affection of cattle met with in the counties of Pictou and Antigonish, Nova Scotia, which seems to make a slow extension from farm to farm, but does not spread widely after the manner of a disease propagated by contagion alone, apart from other concurrent causes.
Alleged Causes. E. F. Thayer (1880) tells us that the inhabitants traced its origin to the arrival from Scotland, about 1853, of a ship in earth ballast, containing the seeds of the common ragweed of Europe (Ambrosia Artemisiæfolia), alleging that the trouble extended with the extension of this weed. This plant has a strong odor (it is known in Pictou as “Stinking Willie”), and, like other plants shedding an abundance of odoriferous pollen, has been charged with arousing “hay fever,” but though very common in Europe it has never been charged with producing anything like the Pictou cattle disease. The coincidence of the plant and the disease is manifestly a mere accident. Professor Lawson, of Halifax, investigated the flora of the district but was unable to find any poisonous plant to which the mortality could be attributed. D. McEachran tells us that many farms are covered with the ragweed, so that it is abundant in the hay, yet they are absolutely free from the disease.
The idea of a mineral poison must be dismissed in the same way. Pictou lies on the Silurian formation with abundant coal fields, and the chemical analyses made for McEachran were entirely fruitless of results.
Wyatt Johnston investigated the question of communicability by contagion from animal to animal, but he found that neither contact, nor inoculation produced positive results. Nothing positive has come of investigations into the possible microbiology of the disease. In blood from the jugular vein of a cow suffering from the disease, Thayer and McEachran found bacteria, under an object glass magnifying 600 diameters. Wyatt Johnston, “in a series of pretty exhaustive bacteriological examinations, in which all the tissues, including the blood, the spleen, the kidneys, lungs, and the fluids from the lymph glands” were employed, failed to find any constant or characteristic organism.
Attacks are very rare in winter, the disease usually appearing in the warm summer months, from June to August, and after the animals have been some time at pasture. This might lead to the suspicion of bacteria or other microbe on the growing vegetation; or of some insect enemy which, maturing at that season, transfers the poison from animal or other source to animal; or of some poison, vegetable or mineral, which acts injuriously on the liver, and which can only be had in the pasture. This, however, is mere hypothesis.
Liver affections are common in hot, damp seasons, but Pictou and Antigonish do not differ in climate from other counties in Nova Scotia, and much less do the infecting farms from those adjacent.