Report of Commission on the Cattle Plague / by Andrew Davidson, Secretary to Commission.

  • Andrew Davidson
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of Commission on the Cattle Plague / by Andrew Davidson, Secretary to Commission. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    101/148 (page 95)
    Sanitary Guardian's Office, Plaines Wilhems, I8th Jamiary 1880. To Dr. DAVIDSON, &c., &c., Src. Beau Bassiu. [Report.] With reference to your letter of the 7th instant, I herewith transmit, for your consideration, a tabular state- ment, shewing the number of cattle inoculated, in the Northern Section of Black River, and Plaines Wilhems District, the only localities under my sanitary charge, in which inoculation was tried. I believe this to be the clear- est way of furnishing you with full particulars in regard to the above subject. If we can judge by the results obtained, inoculation on the whole does not seem to have been attended with any great success. However, it will be a matter for con- sideration, whether it had a fair chance. It strikes me that it had not, for the following reasons, which I would res- pectfully beg to submit for consideration, and argument. lo. On referring to the annexed table it will be ob- served that with the exeception of (3) herds in Black River, and (21) in Plaines Wilhems, all the others were inoculated while under the influence of the disease ; and on some estates large numbers had died. * 2o. The mode of operation (see notes in margin of table) was bad and performed at a too advanced stage of the disease, and by inexperienced persons, a fact admitted by many proprietors (vide annexed letters), and the material used for inoculation, viz : a piece of the lung of an animal which had died of the disease, and in a state of decomposi- tion,was also apparently bad, as it caused rapid inflammation followed by mortification, which killed the cattle in my opinion faster than the disease, I will here give an instance : When Mr. D'Hotman was sent to inoculate the cattle on Riviere Dragon and Belle Vue estates, numbering some 65, the manager Mr. Langlois told me, they were all in good health. But 24 hours after inoculation, the part of the tail where the putrid substance had been inserted, swelled to an enormous size, and in 36 hours afterwards, 63 out the 65 were dead and buried ; and in cutting up the carcasses in order to have them properly buried, Mr. Langlois inform- ed me, that the whole of the interior of the body, from the spot where the putrid matter had been inserted was mortified, * From my remarks on this subject it will be seen that inoculation was much less fatal when practised on animals already affected. Andrew DAVIDSON.