CEREBRO-SPINAL MENINGITIS This disease is also known as Blind Staggers, and causes the death of many horses. It is in no way related to the disease of the same name in human beings. Horses of all ages succumb to it. Often the attacks are mild and the horses recover. Unfortunately, however, deaths are frequent, and all that a man has may die in a very short time. It has long been supposed that mouldy feed causes the disease, but many experiments have been made in which the identical mouldy feed which was said to have caused the trouble was fed to experimental horses, without untoward result. The latest researches upon the question of the etiology of the disease seem to show that it is water-borne and, furthermore, that there are constantly found in the nuclei of the ganglion cells of that part of the brain known as Ammon's horn, of all horses dead from cerebro-spinal meningitis, a peculiar body resembling the Negri bodies found in the brain of rabid dogs. The disease has been reproduced in horses by spraying the nostrils with emulsionized brain. from horses dead with the disease. LEECHES IN HORSES A progressive localized disease of the skin and adjacent tissues occurring most often in horses that graze on low-lying pastures containing lakes or streams, characterized by the formation of a tumor which discharges a bloody plasma and which often contains root-like deposits within the tumor mass, composed of the mycelia of a fungus, calcareous deposits and pus cells, which frequently ends in the death of the horse. The disease is identified with the disease bursatti or rain sore, found in India. It occurs only in horses and is often confounded with the disease known as "summer sore," which is caused by a parasitic worm, filaria iritans. The name "leech" has probably been given from the fact that the water leech is often found in the tumor, being attracted there by the bloody discharge. The "leech" is first noticed as a small flattish tumor, which projects a little above the level of the skin, the size of a quarter of a dollar. It grows rapidly, ruptures and penetrates through the entire skin layer into and through all adjacent tissues, including muscle, tendon and bone, causing perforations and the deposits before mentioned, which are known as krunk ers. When treated early, "leech" can be cured by the application of a strong disinfectant, such as forty per cent. solution of formalin, thoroughly applied. When the disease has penetrated the deeper tissues, disinfectants cannot be made to reach the parts to which the fungus has ramified, and the only course of procedure is to dissect out the affected tissue by wide and deep incisions. The disease is auto-inoculable, i, e., a horse suffering from the intense itching will develop the tumors on the lips and mouth parts from biting the original tumor. TEXAS FEVER The cattle disease which does most damage to the cattle industry of, not only Florida, but the entire so-called South, is Texas or tick fever. The vast importance of this disease is seen when we note that every Southern State, as well as the National Government, is spending large sums of money to rid the country of the common cattle tick, the carrier of the disease. The spread of the cattle tick is limited only by cold and transportation facilities. Wherever a southern, tick-infected bovine animal goes it carries this peculiar disease, even though it itself seems perfectly healthy. If the female tick drops off the smitten animal in warm weather in any climate, north, south, east or west, she lays her eggs. These hatch out and the young or seed ticks climb upon the first bovine animal that passes. If the animal be one that has never been infested with ticks before, be it southern or northern animal, it will, in about a week, develop a fever which in many cases ends fatally.. A certain amount of immunity is conferred in those animals that become infested and do not die. We also know that young calves are not so susceptible to a fatal infection as the older animals. Hence, the new-born calves do not, as a general thing, die from the original tick-infestation, as would an adult, but acquire an increasing immunity from their successive infestations. It has been said that the cattle tick does a damage of $40,000,000 per annum to the South. The ways in which this is brought about are as follows: They prevent the South from becoming a great cattle country; this prevents immigration of a desirable class of citizens and this lessens the agricultural output. They lessen the importation of valuable strains of cattle for the dairy and beef industries. They prevent southern cattle from entering the great markets upon an equal footing with other cattle, because of the national quarantine regulations. They cause the production of inferior, stunted animals because of the damage they do in destroying that vital fluid–the blood. They cause the actual loss of cattle brought here, in ignorance by newcomers, and such persons learn by bitter experience that it is a losing proposition to bring full-grown cattle into a southern state where ticks exist. While full-grown animals are frequently brought here during the cool months when the ticks are more or less dormant, there is always an element of danger. I have known of many full-grown animals being brought here and successfully run the tick gauntlet. I have also known of many that did not get through, and died of tick fever. So that we may say the only safe thing to do is to bring bovines into the state as sucklings. They then have the same chance of living through the fever as a native-born. Of course, the foregoing refers to animals which originate north of the so-called Texas fever line. Bovines may be safely brought here from any point south of the quarantine line, provided that these animals have been raised on ticky pastures. In buying such animals, the question of their having been tickinfested can be settled by the purchaser by finding the scars of tick bites on the escutcheon, bag and down the back surfaces of the thighs, where the skin is hairless. It seems a gigantic task to eradicate an insect so numerous as the cow tick. Yet it can be done. It cannot be done, however, without the co-operation of the farmers, many of whom must first be convinced that the cow tick does any particular harm. The tick is being eradicated and the quarantine line is being pushed farther and farther south every year. The Federal Bureau of Animal Industry issues every now and then a map showing the new location of the line and frequent proclamations by the Secretary of Agriculture announce that certain counties of certain southern states are no longer under quarantine. The minute this is done that county can enter the cattle markets on an equal footing with any other county in the United States. The Florida State Board of Health has ample powers under the law to eradicate cattle ticks, and when the benefits of tick-eradication in other southern states becomes apparent to Floridians, and when Florida has increased her cattle both in number and quality, her citizens will demand the same chances of getting good prices for their cattle as others. Here is an example. Recently a trader of fine cattle sold into South Carolina sixty head of pure-bred and high-grade Herefords. Had his customer lived in the northwestern part of South Carolina, the sale could not have been consummated, because in that section of South Carolina the tick has been eradicated and no cattle from a ticky country are allowed to be shipped there. Moreover, it was necessary, in order to comply with the South Carolina law, to test every one of this bunch of cattle with tuberculin, to exclude the possibility of their having tuberculosis. Suppose Cuba cleans up her ticks, and suppose every other southern state except Florida will eventually clean up, where will Florida find a market for cattle "on the hoof" under fair conditions? BOVINE UNCINARIASIS (Salt Sick. Hookworm Disease.) In September, 1906, the writer prepared Bulletin No. 86, Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, with the above title. He defined "Salt Sick" as "An acute or chronic parasitic disease manifested at first by low fever, diarrhea, loss of appetite; soon becoming chronic, with continuance of low fever, constipation, loss of appetite, progressive emaciation, and pronounced anemia which, in many cases, terminates fatally." In the small intestine near the stomach in bovines suffering with the above symptoms, known locally as "Salt Sick" or "The Sick," may be discovered many small worms about the size of a pin, attached to the lining of the bowel. They ' are brought out more plainly by floating the bowel in water after splitting it open. In the manure of such animals may be found the ova, and when the manure is kept for twenty-four hours and then examined with a low-power microscope, it will be seen these ova have hatched, and the larval body of the hookworm appears. While these worms seem to be identical with the hookworm found in man, there are specific differences; hence they are known under the same generic name, but a different specific name, as Uncinaria radiata, the hookworm of cattle. This disease is most prevalent when pastures die out in the winter time. It is also believed this disease is accentuated by starvation and by tick infestation. It is most prevalent on sandy pastures, around the margins of lakes and sluggish streams. It appears more in cattle pastured continuously on one pasture, because the pasture has the oportunity of becoming more completely infested than when it is frequently changed. |