Actinomykosis : a new infectious disease of animals and mankind / by George Fleming.

  • Fleming, George, 1833-1901.
Date:
[1883]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Actinomykosis : a new infectious disease of animals and mankind / by George Fleming. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    The object of this paper is to bring to notice another addition to the list of microphytes which prove to be veritable scourges to animals, and are productive of loss to the community. For the last two years, the pages of the Veterinary Journal have been more or less occupied with the descriptions and discussion of a disease chiefly affecting bovine animals, more particularly those of a juvenile age, and which has been by the majority of writers designated “ Tubercular Stomatitis,” evidently from the character of the lesions and its chiefly affect- ing the mouth; while by a few it has received other designations, and its tubercular nature has been denied. The same malady has received some attention at other times among veterinary surgeons in this country, but nothing has been published as to its pathology.* Though it is probable that two or more diseases have been included in this discussion, yet with regard to that which received the before-mentioned designation, there were some veterinary surgeons—myself included—who, for several reasons, were inclined to doubt its being allied to, or identical with, Tubercu- losis ; and as the question was one of some importance, from a sanitary and pathological point of view, an attempt was made to decide it by appealing to those practitioners who had the opportunity, to forward specimens of the disease to the Brown Institution for examination. Several members of the profession obligingly complied with the request; but the only specimen which arrived in a satisfactory condition was the tongue of a steer forwarded in May last, by Mr. James, M.R.C.V.S., Thornbury, Gloucestershire. The animal from which the organ had been obtained was, as Mr. James subsequently informed me, one of five affected with this so- called Tubercular Stomatitis, the others having been successfully * There are a few notes on what may have been this malady, by Professor Axe, in the Veterinarian for 1877, pp. 605, 759, but they are merely quotations, and throw no light whatever on the disease. Up to the present time, the views entertained with regard to it are fairly represented in the opinion of the late Professor of Cattle Pathology at the Royal Veterinary College, who, in the course of some remarks on what would appear to have been a case of this affection, and which was designated “Schirrus Tongue,” states that ‘‘the causes of Schirrus are obscure, but they are evidently of a constitutional nature, as the disease is generally insidious in its attack, gradual in its development, and fatal in its consequences.”