ARTICLES.

CATTLE PLAGUE.

Report by Mr. Barron, Her Majesty's Secretary of Legation, on the Cattle Plague in Belgium.

§ A.-Nature and Progress of the Disease.The contagious cattle typhus, otherwise called rinderpest, or steppe-murrain, was introduced last August into Belgium, and broke out in six different provinces. The measures taken to master it having proved completely successful, may perhaps be studied with advantage in the present emergency. The main features of the disease were the same here as elsewhere, viz., a dull and motionless attitude; the back arched, with the legs converging under the body; a peculiar expression of the eye; discharge from the eyes, nose, and mouth; suspended rumination; panting, moaning, trembling, diarrhoea; cessation of milk, extreme weakness, and prostration. The respiratory system seems to have been less attacked

here than in England. The sub-cutaneous emphysema and pustular eruptions were generally absent. All the disorder seemed to be centred in the digestive organs. Enlargement of Peyer's glands is a distinctive and invariable internal symptom of the cattle typhus. The term of incubation, viz., that during which the disease remains latent, formerly held not to exceed nine days, has been found to extend to fifteen, twenty, and even to twenty-two days during the present epidemic.

It is now half a century since the cattleplague has visited Belgium. It appeared here for a short time in the track of the Russian and Austrian armies about 1814, but was not allowed to take root. The Dutch province of Utrecht alone became for a short time a seat of infection. The southern provinces of Russia, especially the banks of the Dnieper, are, if not the birthplace, at least the constant home of this disease. It has always been traceable to

and is only endemic amongst the great breed of the steppes. It was imported into Germany and France by the Austrian armies in 1795, spread from thence into Belgium, and committed great ravages here at the end of last century. Wherever during war Russian or Austrian parks of cattle followed the movements of armies, the cattle plague appeared and spread gradually over the adjacent countries. Thus in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Crimea, it followed the track of the Russian armies.

This is certainly the most fatal and the most contagious of all maladies which attack domestic animals. The ravages which it committed last century in Europe are difficult now to believe. It made four inroads into Western Europe, and Belgium escaped none of them. In 1711 it was imported into Italy, and from thence overran the whole of Western Europe in less than four years, carrying off 1,500,000 cattle. In 1740 a new invasion caused still greater ravages, and lasted till 1757. In Belgium the mortality was so great that in order to preserve what few cattle had survived, an ordinance of 1766 prohibited the export of cattle, and the slaughter of calves and heifers. Holland suffered still more severely than Belgium.

This was the period of the principal outbreak in England, which lasted from 1745 to 1757. It was nearly a year before the country became sufficiently aroused to take national measures for its repression, and these measures then came too late. They were of the same nature as those now practised in Belgium, the first of all being to kill all infected animals, and to bury them with slashed hides ten feet deep under four feet of lime. The movement of cattle was also prohibited, except for immediate slaughter. The disease was thus extinguished in many countries, but lurked in others where the local authorities had been lax. The mortality in England must have amounted to many hundreds of thousands. Cheshire alone lost 30,000 head in nine months. Wherever the traffic in cattle was prohibited, the disease gradually subsided, but it broke out again when the restrictions were removed or evaded. The discretionary powers given to local authorities were not exercised generally, promptly, and firmly. The plague

was extinguished where the local authorities acted with vigour, but lingered in other places, whence it spread, after a time, as rapidly as ever. All justices were not equally firm, equally ready to do an unpopular thing, equally convinced of the magnitude of the calamity.

In 1768 the plague made a third inroad into Western Europe, not less disastrous than the former ones, and did not spare Belgium. This time the local governments of the Austrian Netherlands, taught by experience, took summary measures to root it out, and thus reduced the losses to a total of 12,000 head, while one canton of Bruges, which refused to apply these measures, lost 6,000 head out of 25,700, and Holland lost 395,000.

This form of disease, like every other, varies in intensity according to circumstances, but always kills the greater number of the animals which it seizes on. The cattle of the steppes alone form an exception to this rule, and may recover in a proportion of 50 to 75 per cent. This is not the case with other species more artificial in their breed and habits. The number of recoveries among these cannot be estimated, except towards the decline of the epidemic, at more than from 10 to 20 per cent. In Poland, during a succession of visitations between 1848 and 1855, the cures did not attain 20 per cent. The plague which in 1863 visited Hungary, Galicia, and Moravia, carried off in each country 65, 77, and 88 per cent. respectively of the animals attacked. It is impossible to estimate accurately the mortality of the present plague in England and Holland. It is certainly, at least in England, not less malignant than any on record, but seems to have lost some of its virulence in coming over to Holland.

The importation of the cattle plague into England is involved in some obscurity, but is traced with probability to a cargo of 321 beasts imported from Revel to Hull in May, 1865. Another theory ascribes it to some Hungarian cattle imported from Vienna to England through Holland. Its first appearance is set down on June 27 at Islington in a cow purchased on June 19 in the London Cattle Market. The facts concerning the transmission of the disease to Holland are now well known in all their details. In June a Dutch landowner of Kethel in South Holland sent to his son in England twenty-three fat oxen, to be sold in London.

They were several times offered for sale in the Metropolitan Market, and finally, not finding a sale at an adequate price, re-shipped from London to Rotterdam on July 22. During all this time the disease was existing in London without being recognized. A few days after their return to Kethel the disease broke out violently in the whole herd. As its real nature was not suspected, no sanitary precautions were taken. It soon spread like wildfire over all the neighbouring communes. A veterinary surgeon was sent specially to examine the nature of the disease. His report, which appeared on August 29 in the Staats Courant, first revealed that it was the contagious cattle typhus. The Government then took some measures to check its diffusion by subjecting the thirteen infected communes to a severe inspection. Too much was still left to the discretion of the local authorities. However, a military cordon of cavalry was drawn round the infected district. All egress of cattle was prohibited, and beyond that zone all cases of the plague were ordered to be destroyed. This measure was successful in retarding but not in arresting the march of the plague. It has several times burst through its bounds and crept into Utrecht, Zeeland, and North Holland. The province of North Brabant has been hitherto preserved by the more vigorous attitude of the authorities.

Meanwhile, with the spread of the disease the trade became more active and the markets more crowded than ever. Sickly and suspected cattle were of course sent there at once in order to avoid a total loss, and thus spread the disease far and wide. The imports from Holland to Belgium became unusually large, having large, having attained the figure of 4,609 down to the end of August, the average of the first eight months being in former years only 3,200. These imports, partly derived from the Rotterdam market, the great refuge of suspicious animals, brought the germs of the disease

Weekly numbers attacked in three successive weeks.

into Belgium. Some infected cattle are known to have entered Belgium on the 16th of August. Many had probably entered before that date. No one here knew then what the disease was.

Public rumour announced the appearance of a mysterious disease, first in England, next in Holland. Some precautionary measures were immediately applied at the sea-ports, and at the Custom-houses facing the Netherlands. The existence of a contagious disease in England exposed Belgium to no immediate danger, as the imports from thence are merely nominal, being confined to a few animals generally imported by the Government itself for the improvement of the breed. With Holland the case was different, and the danger from that quarter was imminent. As soon, therefore, as the Staats Courant revealed the fatal truth, the Belgian Government hesitated not a single day to close the whole frontier against the importation of cattle. Meanwhile, the plague-swifter in its movements than the Government had already crossed the border, had broken out on several points of Flanders, and had even penetrated into France.

In Belgium this plague has been stamped out at last by a series of measures which, having been signally successful, are worthy of being briefly recorded. In England and Holland such measures are no longer applicable, as the malady has there been allowed to arrive at such a height as to render its extirpation hopeless. The only faint hope left is to circumscribe the disease within a certain zone, and to dispute every mile of ground with it. This is the course now pursued in Holland, but with slight success. The principal centre of infection is still the Schiedam district, where the disease originally broke out, and was allowed to fester without interruption. Down to the 13th of January, 1866, the following are the official results of reported cases from the commencement of the disease::

The above figures for England and Holland are admittedly inadequate, for the cases officially reported are only a part of those which have actually occurred, many being concealed from interested motives. The character of this disease and its mode of progress cannot be better described than in the following words of the roval commission:

The cattle plague is, in the language of medicine, a specific disease, belonging to the class of contagious fevers. The contagious matter is subtle, volatile, prolific in an unexampled degree. It is conveyed, in a most virulent form in the excretions from the dis. eased animal. It may travel, we know, in the hide, horns, hoofs, and intestines of the dead animal; it lurks undeveloped in the system for a period about which some difference of opinion exists, which certainly is not less than five days, usually seven or eight, but appears to be more prolonged in some cases. Towards the end of this period of incubation, but at what precise period we do not know, it becomes capable of diffusing itself by contagion. A diseased animal may, therefore, be infectious before it shows any signs of disease, or at all events, before the malady betrays itself to any but a very close and skilful observer. The proportion of cases in which it is fatal is extraordinarily large. No specific has been discovered which neutralizes or expels the poison; judicious treatment may enable nature to resist till the virus has spent itself; injudicious treatment may have a contrary effect; but that is all. The practical conclusion, therefore, at which foreign physicians and foreign governments have arrived-the conclusion that it is better always to kill a diseased animal, or a few diseased animals, where by so doing you can kill an isolated germ of disease, instead of suffering that germ to linger and fructify while you are attempting a cure for the precarious prospect of an insignificant saving-is justified by reason; it is also directly justified by experience, which shows that while the plague propagated from a single germ speedily becomes unmanageable, spreads from herd to herd, from. province to province, and from country to country, multiplies in a continually increasing ratio, and exhausts itself only after ruinous havoc and a long course of time, it may be effectually eradicated by prompt and unsparing measures." VOL. IV.

§ B. Sanitary Measures.-The principles acted upon in Belgium are identical with those so ably expounded above by the highest English authority. The cattle plague is certainly not incurable, as some small proportion of animals recover even during the most severe epidemics. These cures, however, seem to result from the mildness of the attack, seconded more by the efforts of nature than by those of art. In this latter respect we seem to be much in the same position as in 1711, when this malady was first seriously investigated. The curative methods attempted since then have been infinite, and seem to be all equally impotent. The same small proportion of cases seems to recover under all medicinal treatments, and in the absence of any. The Belgian Government has come to the conclusion, which is also that of the French Government and of the royal commission of England, that the only effectual treatment is to prevent the pestilence from effecting a lodgment by destroying it in the germ whenever it appears.

The articles 459, 460, 461, and 462 of the Penal Code contain some provisions for the detection and repression of contagious diseases among cattle, and further expressly maintain the former laws and regulations on the subject. These laws and regulations form a special branch of legislation, embodied, firstly, in a long list of edicts and ordinances issued in the several states of the Austrian Netherlands from the early till the latter part of last century, which, being mostly local, temporary, and incompatible with present institutions, have become obsolete; secondly, in the ministerial circular of 23 Messidor, An V., (1797), which recapitulated, strengthened, and confirmed the principal dispositions of the ancient legislation of France. This circular was, together with the Arrêt du Conseil of 1784, duly inserted in the Bulletin des Lois, was promulgated in these Belgian departments of the Republic by a consular arrêté of 1803, and is therefore still in force. Some further dispositions on the subject are to be found in the laws of 1790, 1791, and 1816, the latter creating the "Fonds d'Agriculture." These laws, if analyzed, will be found to impose the following obligations :

A. On Private Individuals. - 1. Stockowners, herds, and veterinary surgeons, are to notify immediately to the bourgmestre the

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