Appendix to Fourth report of the Commissioners : minutes of evidence, October to December, 1907.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vivisection (1906)
Date:
1907
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Appendix to Fourth report of the Commissioners : minutes of evidence, October to December, 1907. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    282/316 (page 276)
    less completely, and becomes an excellent medium for their propagation ?—Yes. 20170. That must be rather a confusing factor ?— It is a most confusing element; it vitiates experi- ments; experiments may be negative or positive, according to the season at which they are performed. 20171. Then I see on pages 201 and 202 of your second part you say, “This, however, seems fairly clear, namely, that animals in good condition are more liable to braxy than those poorly nourished. But even in this respect there are endless sources of fallacy. Is it, strictly speaking, braxy that these well-fed animals die from, or is it something else which has been mis- taken for braxy? Is it so-called ‘blackquarter,’ for instance, or is it the disease known as ‘struck’ or, finally, is it a disease hitherto unrecognised? To com- mit one’s self to such untested statements would be productive only of further confusion where confusion is already rife.” Should I be right in thinking from that that it may turn out, after all, that blackquarter and braxy are the same?—No. The term “braxy” in the bucholic mind is one applied with a very wide margin; a shepherd will tell you that there are all kinds of braxies, red braxy, white braxy, water braxy, and so on, these all representing different diseases. 20172. I see you proceed on the same page to say, “All these crude and untutored notions seemed, in our estimation, quite inadequate to account for the seasonal character of the contagious diseases of the sheep. We felt there must be something deeper, pro- bably something peculiar in the constitution of the sheep, in all likelihood something reaching far back in the animal’s ancestral history which was at the foundation of this seasonal peculiarity ” ?—That is so. 20173. Some constitutional peculiarities, I appre- hend, irrespective of any microbic invasion ?—~Yes, quite. method of communication of the disease from sheep to sheep, whether by tick or otherwise ?—I have. 20175. Would you be so good as to state it?—We made a great many experiments with the tick to see whether we could communicate the disease through the bite of the tick. 20176. (Chairman.) Which disease are you speak- ing of +—Louping-ill. There was a prevalent notion that louping-ill might be conveyed by the bite of the tick, probably from the fact that the tick appears parasitically in the sheep at the same time as louping- ill, both in the spring months, and accordingly we had to see what truth there was in that opinion. I may say that in some of the most pronounced cases of louping-ill that we saw the sheep had not a single tick upon it, nor a single tick bite. Others were covered with ticks, but never did we see any evidence of the virus being inoculated from the point where the tick had bitten. We showed experimentally that if you tattooed the. skin of the sheep! with a little of the virus of louping-ill you could produce louping- ill, and you produced a local lesion, a lesion very much like that found in blackquarter sometimes ; but never in any instance did we see the disease spread from a tick bite as in the case of this superficial scarification. 20177. (Sir Walliam Collins.) You think the tick may be dismissed then as the medium of conveyance of the disease?—No, there is one method by which I think it may under rare circumstances (but so rare that it may almost be put out of account), become the means of conveyance, namely, when the tick is swallowed. The tick crawls all over the soiled parts of the fleece, and becomes smeared with the feecal matter and so on, from the moist parts of the skin, and under the circumstances I can quite well conceive that it might convey the disease when it is swallowed by the sheep. 20178. Then the evidence points to the fact that the disease is communicated by ingestion rather than by inoculation ?—Certainly. 20179. In your earlier observations did you find that the slaughter of the animal in the earlier stages of the disease was the best mode of finding the cause or by allowing the animal to die and examining the earcase ?—By allowing the animal to die ; but never in any instance when I examined the peritoneal liquid in an animal killed during ‘the height of the disease, did I fail to recover from the peritoneal liquid by incubation the same bacillus as that which I found so constantly. 20180. I see on page 51 of the second part of your Report you say, “ We discovered, however, as time went on, that the killing of the animal was an entirely the disease. 20181. May I ask what was the earliest date of the administration of drenching?—I think there were some preliminary experiments which we made (I am open to correction) in the years 1903 and 1904. 1903, I think it would be, when we begun. pn — 20182. When did you first try it on a large scale }— We went on increasing the number year by year up to the present time. i 20183. Have you formed any idea as to the dura- tion of the alleged immunity ?—In braxy it seems to last the life-time in the majority of cases. As in the ease of small-pox, you will find exceptions here and there; but in the case of braxy I think it will Jast the natural life, or the commercial life of the animal, at any rate—quite sufficiently long for commercial purposes. I am not so sure with louping-ill whether that is so. Two-year-old sheep take the disease, and it is said sometimes take it twice. I do not think, in the case of louping-ill, it is quite so lasting, although it tides the animal over the louping-ill season, and that is the great point. ca 20184. When you speak of the duration of a life time, what period have you in your mind ?~—From two to two and a half years, that ig to say, in the case « an animal for slaughter. : ‘ 20185. Referring to the particular case of the 420, when the 400 were drenched and 20 were not drenched, has it been the subject of an official report ?—Not yet 5 we are getting the report ready. It has been a most: arduous matter to procure all the details of such a report, and we are trying to render it as accurate as possible, to sift out the kernel of truth from the many statements sent into us; it will be presented. to the Board of Agriculture before many weeks. I have it nearly ready. . “ae 20186. I was wondering whether it was in a form in which you could favour the Commission with it ?—_ I do not think so. I must present it to the Board of — Agriculture first. q 20187. I did not quite gather your evidence im regard to the 30 out of the 400 that died. I under- stood you to say that they died of various things, in- cluding accidents?—Yes, various things. “~ 20188. In the case of how many of those 30 was ] the peritoneal fluid presented to you for examination —I have not got my note-book with me bearing upon — that particular subject ; but I think I made up the number when I got the details returned to me to be eleven. ; r 20189. Including those cases by drowning %4—I- id not know. If you take the total mortality you must always leave a margin for drowning—and all sorts. of accidents. ; 20190. But I Undorsteed that the 30 included all these casualties ?—Yes. 20191. I was wondering how many of the 30 were submitted to you for examination?—Hleven. 20192. Were there any casualties among the 30%— I cannot tell you definitely. I would not like to com- mit myself upon a matter of that kind. I cannot re- member at present. . . 20193. Do you think that you examined one fourth, as I understood you to say to the noble Chairman, 7 t the 50 that were undrenched and died ?—I would not definitely. 20194. You prefer not to commit yourself to any precise figures ?—If you please. I must present them to the Board of Agriculture first. I would like to have my figures before me before I say anything” further about it. 20195. (Sir John McFadyean.) These invyestiga- tions of yours have been followed with great interest, I understand, by the agricultural community of Scot- land ?—They have. a. 20196. And so far as you know the line of investi- gation that has been pursued has had their approval? — —Yes, it has had their approval with certain failures. — in certain districts. \ 20197. I was not referring to that. I mean that — they do not disapprove of the fact that you have