standard of morals and intelligence. Should it be found practicable to extend the principles of the Factory Acts so as to embrace the large numbers which have come under review in these reports, the blessings which will follow, -if at all equal to those which have attended that series of Acts since their commencement in 1802,-will largely add to the store that has been accumulated by the beneficent legislation of your Majesty's reign.

All this we humbly certify to your Majesty.
HUGH SEYMOUR TREMENHEERE.
EDWARD CARleton Tufnell.

CATTLE PLAGUE.

Third Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Origin and Nature, &c. of the Cattle Plague.

IN our second report submitted to your Majesty, we stated that we had requested several gentlemen, eminent in medicine and chemistry, to investigate the cattle plague from some special points of view. The reports which we have received from them we now lay before your Majesty as a part of the appendix to this our third and final report. In doing so, we desire first to express our obligations to them for their work, undertaken at the shortest notice, and performed under the disadvantage of having a very limited time allowed for it; and further, to record our sense of the valuable additions which they have made to the stock of knowledge which previously existed respecting the disease. In these acknowledgments we include the Edinburgh Cattle Plague Committee, who

have furnished us with a valuable paper embodying the result of their inquiries.*

Some of these investigations might with advantage be pursued further, in directions pointed out by the reporters themselves. We recommend these suggestions to the consideration of your Majesty's Government.

In our own present report we shall avoid entering into discussions on doubtful points, and shall content ourselves with marking out, as briefly and plainly as we can, such of the results arrived at by observation and experi ment as we deem most important, and arranging them in what seems to us the most convenient order. Thus we shall consider, first, the symptoms and course of the disease, and the nature of it, as deduced from those symptoms. We shall then proceed to the question, how and whence it originated; and shall afterwards pass on to the means of prevention and cure, and the precautions which should be taken in order to prevent future outbreaks of it.

The preparation of this report has, from its nature, devolved mainly on the medical members of the commission, and their colleagues necessarily rely on them for the soundness of the views expressed in it on questions of medicine, chemistry, and physiology.

1. Symptoms and Course of the Disease. We were anxious to ascertain, in the first place, what are the earliest signs which can be relied on as indicating the existence of the disease. As to this point, the inquiries set on foot in this country, first by Professor Gamgee and then by Dr. Sanderson, establish this fact,

that a rise of temperature precedes any other symptom. Within a period ranging from thirty-six to forty-eight hours after an animal has taken the cattle plague by inoculation the natural temperature rises from 102° Fahr., or a little above, to 104° or even to 105°. This occurs at a time when the animal appears be in no way ill. It follows, therefore, that the length of the incubative period, that is, of the

to

*This committee consisted of the following gentle men :-Professor Dick, V.S.; James A. Hunter, M.D.; Henry J. Littlejohn, M.D.; Professor Douglas Maclagan, M.D.; Dr. Lyon Playfair, C.B., F.RS.; C. S. Romanis, V.S.; Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart M.D.; Professor Strangeways, V.S.; Professor John Wilson ;-Andrew Wood, M.D., chairman.

me when the disease is hatching in the body, is less than was supposed. The disease can be detected at least two days earlier than has been hitherto believed, and the duration assigned to the incubative period must be reduced by that time. This discovery has practical importance. It may and ought to lead to an earlier separation of sick from sound animals, and may also render it possible to shorten the period of quarantine.

Two days after the perceptible rise of temperature has begun, the next sign occurs, namely, a peculiar condition of, or eruption on, the lining membrane of the mouth. It resembles at first sight the appearance in the foot and mouth disease, but can readily be distinguished from it by a practised eye. Dr. Sanderson has found it in every case (eighty in all) seen by him, and in every instance he has been able to recognize the disease from this sign alone. It has been stated, however, that in rare instances it has been absent. Almost simultaneously there occurs a very distinctive appearance on the mucous membrane of the vagina. It appears that one or other of these signs is very rarely absent; so that when they are taken in connection with the elevation of temperature, the diagnosis of the disease can be made with certainty.

On the day following the appearance of the eruption, or about seventy-two hours after the first elevation of temperature, the animal may be observed to be a little ill, to have less appetite than usual, and to ruminate irregularly. Even at this time, however, the pulse may be unaltered. On the following day, the fourth from the first rise of the temperature, the animal for the first time shows marked symptoms of illness, and this period, which may be 110 hours after the real commencement, is usually considered by superficial observers as the beginning of the disease. The seriousness of this oversight is obvious, not only on account of the great importance of the earliest possible separation and isolation, but in regard to treatment. The very earliest recognition of the disease is essential, if a remedy is to be discovered, for it is within the first four days that any remedy is most likely to be efficacious. After the fourth day is over the constitution is thoroughly invaded. Then ensue the urgent symptoms,-the drooping

head, the hanging ears, the distressed look, the failing pulse, the oppressed breathing, the discharge from the eyes, nose, and mouth, the eruption of the skin, the foetid breath, and the other well-known signs of the disease. During the sixth day there occurs a great diminution of the contractile force of the heart and voluntary muscles, the pulse becomes very feeble and thready, the respiratory movements are modified, and the animal sometimes shows such weakness in the limbs, that it has even been thought that some special paralytic affection of the spinal nerves must exist. The temperature now rapidly falls, and signs of a great diminution in the normal chemical changes in the body appear. Death usually occurs on the following or seventh day from the first perceptible elevation of temperature. Although this is given as the typical course of the disease, there are great deviations from it, as some animals live a longer, many a much shorter time, and the severity and sequence of the symptoms vary considerably.

In

The causes leading to these symptoms, or, in other words, the reasons why these alterations from health occur, may be thus stated. A peculiar agent causes first of all a morbid state of the blood. Coincident with the first elevation of temperature, and, of course, long before there is the least outward appearance of ill-health, the blood of an animal which has taken the cattle plague contains an agent which can produce the plague in another animal. other words, the earliest fact which can be made out after infection is, that the blood contains the poison of the disease, so that serum obtained from it will give the disease by inoculation. This fact, ascertained by Dr. Sanderson, is the most important pathological discovery yet made in cattle plague. It is pregnant with consequences in medical doctrine, for though the existence of a similar fact has been long suspected in several human diseases, it has never been proved in any. So material, indeed, is it that we must dwell on it for a moment. The poison contained in a minute portion of the mucous discharge from the eyes and mouth of an animal ill with cattle plague, if placed in the blood of a healthy animal increases so fast that in less than forty-eight hours, perhaps in a far shorter time, the whole mass of blood, weighing many pounds, is in

fected, and every small particle of that blood contains enough poison to give the disease to another animal. This at once accounts for the rapid spread of the cattle plague. The agent is multiplied to a large amount in a very short space of time. How soon after the poison is put into the blood the animal becomes capable of giving the disease by natural infection to other animals, is not determined: possibly not until those parts of the body which can give off products to the air become impregnated with the poison. At what time the blood and the textures cease to be able to give the disease, is also not determined; nor, when the poison mixed with mucus or with serum is exposed to the air, can a definite time be named when its energy is destroyed.*

As far as we can judge, the elevation of temperature, or (to use the usual medical term) the fever begins when the poison has infected the whole mass of blood, i.e., within from about forty to sixty hours after its first entrance into the system. At the same time the chemical changes in the body are augmented and one of the ultimate products of disintegrated tissue, urea, is, according to Dr. Marcet, largely increased in amount. Soon afterwards (the time cannot be stated with precision), the blood is otherwise altered, the amount of fibrine is largely increased, the amount of water is lessened, and possibly the physical condition of the albumen may be altered, if we may judge. from the change which Dr. Marcet observes in the diffusibility of the albumen of the muscles. According to Dr. Beale, the proportion of soluble substances is also largely increased.

The next phenomenon which can be observed is an alteration in the circulation. Almost everywhere, but more especially on the mucous surfaces and on the skin, there occur on the third or fourth day local congestions varying in size and intensity.. In many places obstructions occur, and coagulations of blood in the capillaries; and in some cases the blood becomes quite stagnant.

*When carefully protected the mucous discharges have occasionally retained their power of giving the disease by inoculation for no less a time than eleven months, according to professor Jessen of Dorpat. Ravitsch also has kept the poison for seven months.

A great increase of granular matter is found to take place both within, and outside the vessels of the affected parts. The capillary vessels themselves are greatly enlarged, and the spaces between them lessened or even obliterated. At the same time a considerable nutritive alteration goes on in the mucous membrane and skin, which leads to very rapid and imperfect growth of many of the cellular elements, and this is followed by a rapid disintegration and detachment in the form of discharges. As that portion of the mucous membrane which is most essential for the digestion of the food is most affected, the appetite soon fails, rumination ceases, and large accumulations of undigested fodder are met with in the first stomach. In many cases the villi of the small intestine are so destroyed that even if food were taken it would scarcely be absorbed in sufficient quantity to maintain life, and hence the rapid exhaustion, failure of the heart's action, depression of the animal heat, and general sinking of the powers. In some cases, when the process is more superficial, the membrane recovers its former structure, and that rapidly, and it is curious to find that one affected part may be healing while another is just beginning to suffer.

When, as sometimes happens, the mucous membrane most affected by the congestion is that of the lungs, the phenomena are not less severe; indeed the disease is sometimes even more quickly fatal. A slight cough is soon followed by accelerated breathing, which rapidly increases; and not unfrequently the difficulty becomes so great that some of the air vesicles are broken, and the air passes into the cellular tissue between the lobules, and from this it reaches even the subcutaneous textures of the back. This is believed by Dr. Bristowe and Dr. Sanderson to be the cause of the emphysema which they fully describe.

Reviewing this train of symptoms, it appears that the amount of fever, that is, the extent of the rise of temperature, does not constitute the danger of the disease; in some of Dr. Sanderson's cases the temperature was higher in beasts which recovered than in others which died. The true measure of the danger should rather, it seems, be sought in the changes in the nutrition of the digestive or respiratory

mucous membranes, or in the failure in muscular contractility. This latter condition is itself probably in part a consequence of the former, though whether it is entirely so we are not prepared to say.

The Russian pathologist, Ravitsch, has already described with great accuracy some of these congestive phenomena, and his observations are fully confirmed and extended in the reports of Dr. Bristowe, Dr. Beale, Dr. Sanderson, and Dr. Murchison.

The immediate cause of these violent congestions, and of the consequent obstructions of the capillary circulation, which really constitute the great danger of the disease, is still unascertained. The explanation which Dr. Beale. gives is, that the poison itself consists of extremely minute particles of living matter, which multiply in the blood, and cause local capillary obstruction, which passes on into complete stagnation. In consequence of the impeded circulation, an increased proportion of soluble nutrient matter permeates the vascular walls, and gains access to the nuclei of the vessels and adjacent tissues, which increase much in size. This change is associated with, and causes, the rise of temperature which occurs at this period of the disease.

If regarded from a chemical point of view, it appears probable that this immediate cause resides in an increased zymotic action in the blood and in the textures, whence increased temperature, accelerated circulation, more rapid growth, congestion, obstruction, and disintegration ensue.

Whatever may be the cause of these very general congestions and nutritive alterations, the remarkable fact obtains that poison is present in the discharges from the mucous membrane, and hence at this period the beast is most highly infectious. The matter runs down the hide to the floor or woodwork, and when dry may be carried as dust in the air, and infect other beasts when received on the absorbing surfaces of the eyes, nose, mouth, lungs, or stomach.

2. Nature of the Disease. Since it is certain that the cause of the disease is actually contained in the mucous discharges, and in the blood, and probably in the textures, of a beast ill with cattle plague,

inasmuch as a healthy animal can be inoculated with these substances at any time, and the poison can, as experience shows, be carried, if need be, hundreds of miles in portions of these substances, it might be supposed that there would be no difficulty in separating and demonstrating the virus itself.

Dr. Beale has examined portions of infected. blood textures and mucous discharges with the highest magnifying powers that exist, namely,

over.

th of an inch focal adjustment. This magnifies 2,800 diameters; or, to express the magnifying power by some examples,—an inch would appear to extend over 111 yards, and a child three feet tall would look as high as Mont Blanc. With such power, particles of even Toooooth of an inch in diameter, having any distinct character, would not be passed But he has found no definitely formed substance that can certainly be said to be the cause of the cattle plague. He finds a great increase of granular matter, but no new appearance decidedly characteristic of the disease. Possibly this granular matter may be the poison; possibly again it may exist in particles of definite form, and of a size still smaller than 100'000th of an inch, but which might be perceived if it were possible to construct instruments of still higher magnifying powers; more probably it is matter of a kind which is and will always be undiscoverable by the microscope. The peculiar entozoon-like bodies (Rainey's corpuscles) which are found so frequently in the muscles of animals dead with cattle plague, are not peculiar to this disease, and may be absent in it. They cannot therefore be the poison.

As the microscope fails us, we turn to chemistry to detect the substance, but chemistry has not hitherto separated the poison, and no chemical test as yet exists by which it can be recognized. An examination of the air vitiated by the disease is described in the report of Dr. Angus Smith. Chemistry has as yet found in cattle plague no complex albuminoid matter in a state of rapid chemical change capable of communicating its own action to the albumen of the serum of the blood and of the textures of cattle.

Hence it is only by its effects on the living body that the poison can be identified. In this it resembles other animal poisons which affect

animals and man. From the modes of increase and of action of these animal poisons a comparison has been drawn between the diseases they produce and fermentations. But as Dr. Angus Smith's report shows, the chemistry of the various kinds of fermentation is at present in a state of great uncertainty, and the different views of Liebig and Pasteur still offer questions for discussion. The action which takes place in these diseases may be very different from that of any ordinary fermentation. Whatever be the nature of the action, the poison certainly requires a peculiar condition in the body before it can act; thus it can multiply in the body of a bovine animal, or of a sheep, goat, deer, or gazelle, whilst we have no satisfactory proof that it is communicable to non-ruminants.

Where the poison can act it increases rapidly, and causes a disease similar to that in the animal from which it was taken, whereas, if placed in the body of a man, horse, or dog, it produces no such effect. It follows that in the first-named animals there is some special condition or aptitude wanting in the others. But even in different species of animals, all of which are susceptible, the internal conditions are evidently not quite similar. The sheep and goat take the disease less easily than the ox. The disease also is in general less virulent, the symptoms and the post-mortem appearances being slighter, and the mortality less.

Further, the virus, in passing through the body of an animal, usually renders it insusceptible of another attack. In all these respects the poison resembles several other animal poisons.

If we desire to place the cattle plague in some recognized class of diseases we must range it under the zymotic class, as formed by Dr. Farr. The maladies to which it has the closest alliance are the so-called exanthematous or eruptive fevers its relation to the different members :

* The word poison, as applied to the cause of cattle plague, is used in the general medical meaning. Unlike a chemical, corrosive, or irritant poison, it requires a second condition to be present, for it does not act unless certain favouring conditions also exist. The terms "germ" or "growth" are used because no better expressions can be found. They seem to imply an independent living existence of the poison, and on this point our knowledge is not yet sufficiently definite. Care must be taken that the terms used do not lead to erroneous conclusions.

of this order will be found fully discussed in Dr. Murchison's and Dr. Bristowe's reports.

3. Origin and Propagation of the Disease.

To answer the question, what should be done to limit the progress of the disease, or to prevent its return, we ought to know how it originated here, and the conditions of its propagation.

If, for example, the cattle plague has spontaneously originated in this country from the way in which our cattle have been housed or fed, we might hope to show how such conditions act, and how they can be removed. If it orignates in some wave of poisonous air which spreads over the country, and, after having a regular period of flow has a succeed. ing period of ebb and disappearance, we must be content with bearing for no care can foresee and no art control. If, however, cattle plague has been introduced among our herds by the arrival from infected places of cattle already diseased, and if it spreads entirely by contagion, it is obvious that means may be used, which, if applied strictly and carefully, will be effectual to prevent its return.

We have been able to find no evidence of a spontaneous origin in England. The first known cases were all in animals collected from different parts of England and Holland, brought to the Metropolitan Market on one particular day, the 19th of June; they were purchased by different dairymen, and then taken to five sheds in different parts of London, namely, in Islington, Hackney, Lambeth, and Paddington. As there was no cattle plague in the parts of England whence these cattle came, and none in the sheds to which they were taken, and as the length of the incubation period, as well as the absence of any probable cause, negatives the idea of a spontaneous origination simaltaneously in these five sheds, the conclusion becomes almost irresistible that the cattle must have caught the disease whilst standing for sale in the Metropolitan Market. Now this market is certainly the most likely place in England for cattle plague to be brought to from abroad, and if not the most unlikely, at any rate an unlikely place for it to spring up

in.

It ought to be a matter of no surprise that we have been unable to indicate the precise channel by which the poison came into the market; from the universal ignorance of the