Accepting the conclusions reached by Lignieres, we are still debarred from entering the affection in the list of animal plagues proper, to be met by official restrictions. The streptococcus may be an essential condition in each case of the disease, or it may be one of several microbes that may act in the causation, yet the microbe in ordinary doses as accidentally introduced, does not prove pathogenic excepting in the presence of concurrent conditions of high feeding and condition, work, interrupted by one or more days of absolute idleness, and the resumption of exercise. The presence of the microbe is not enough to cause the disease in the horse in continuous work, nor in that which is kept in the stable all the time, nor even in the horse that has worked steadily and then stood idle for a day, until he again goes to work. One animal or a few only out of a stable, are attacked, and there is no such active extension from animal to animal in the vicinity that characterizes the plagues proper.
The prevention of the disease, therefore, must be sought along the lines previously laid down and well understood, in the avoidance of sudden plethora, of transient idleness during a period of high condition and steady work, and of gradual restoration to work after such period of rest. Similarly the treatment by rest, depletion, diluents, evacuants, and nerve sedatives is still in order. A new importance, however, attaches to the use of nerve sedatives and antiseptics, as calculated to prove a check on the disorder of the nervous structure and functions and on the active proliferation of the microbe.
The presence of the streptococcus may also contribute, along with the permanent changes in the nerve structure, in predisposing to relapses or second attacks, which are so common unless the animal which has once suffered is subjected to very special care.
As a fruit of the research by Lignieres, W. A. McClanahan, Redding, Ia., essayed internal antisepsis by ½ oz. doses of potassium iodide. In three severe cases relief was obtained in 15 to 20 minutes and an early and complete convalescence followed. In the hands of J. H. Kelly of New Haven, Conn., and T. S. Childs of Saratoga, N. Y., it seemed to prove equally successful, the first meeting with almost invariable success, and the latter reporting a series of 10 successive cases, several of them severe, which all recovered in from 1 to 5 days. The only untoward result was an open knee joint in one subject, the result of bruises sustained before Dr. Childs arrived. His treatment was ½ oz. of the iodide at once, and 1 to 2 drs. every hour or second hour, according to the size of the animal and the severity of the case.
In other hands this medication has been less successful, which may well be explained by the violence of the attacks, and the lack of absorption from the inactive stomach. Unless it passed on to the duodenum, it would be utterly useless, and hence the exhibition by the rectum or subcutem might be tried. The parallelism of the treatment of the two diseases of the plethoric and possibly infected subject,—parturient paresis and hæmoglobinæmia,—is striking, and it does not seem that the iodide treatment should be abandoned because of a few unsuccessful cases. Whether the iodide acts mainly as a microbicide, a chemical antidote to toxins, an eliminant, or a nerve sedative, or in two or more of these modes, is unknown, but it would be rational to expect good results along one or more of these lines. Iodide treatment should supplement, not supersede, the methods formerly in use.
INFECTIVE ULCERATION OF ANUS AND VULVA IN CATTLE.
This curious affection is recorded as having prevailed in the winter of 1897–8 in different localities in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. In 1900 and 1901 it was again reported in different parts of Iowa.
Causation. No bacteriology of the disease has been given, and its appearance in isolated herds which had no known communication with other herds, and even in the young cattle on a farm to the exclusion of the older ones, seems to suggest an enzoötic origin, perhaps in food or water, or in some toxin determined by a fermentation of organic matter out of the body.
On the Rodkey farm at Blue Rapids, Marshall county, Kan., eight heifers from ten to fourteen months old, suffered, while the seventeen steers of the same age and the milch cows escaped. (Steddom). Near Shelby, Ia., a bull, from a healthy herd, broke into an affected herd and served cows there, and was afterward returned to his own herd and served cows there, but did not communicate the disease. (S. T. Miller). No case is recorded to show that any bull serving affected cows or heifers contracted ulcer or other disease of sheath or penis.
In one herd near Shelby, Ia., nineteen head of cows and heifers suffered, while the four steers in the herd escaped. In another herd of twenty-six head, in the same district, the four cows and eight of the twenty-two steers suffered. It is not, therefore, confined to the females. (S. T. Miller).