SEPTEMBER, 1946]
JOHN
B.
POLDING
189
being chilled while pregnant. At the same time, further field investigation is needed in search of the
postulated pathogen.
In the face of so much incertitude it is pleasant to be able to recall that buffaloes are definitely
known to abort after an attack of a severe fever or systemic disturbance, e.g., rinderpest, antirinderpest
injections, haemorrhagic septicemia, or foot and mouth disease and the likelihood that they are more
liable to this accident than cows adds credence to the conjecture that abortions may be also caused
by chilling during rainfall.
Sheep and goats
Although abortion due to Brucellosis seems to be quite rare in the village sheep and goats of
India, abortion associated with extra-genital disease is common. Indeed it seems possible that these
animals will abort as the result of any disease which seriously impairs their health, e.g., pneumonia,
rinderpest or rinderpest pneumonia, contagious pleuro-pneumonia (goats), wah, pox and even para-
sitic infestation. On the whole, goats appear to be worse offenders than sheep ; indeed the writer
is of the opinion that goats will sometimes abort as the result of the slightest interference even one so
trivial as an intravenous injection. According to some reports, the rate of abortion at such times
may be extremely high and even 70 to 80 per cent has been suggested. Whenever blood testing has
been possible in connection with these outbreaks, the results have been consistently negative to
Brucellosis and Salmonella infections.
As in buffaloes, so in goats there are certain abortion epidemics of obscure aetiology. Unhappily
the majority of these have occurred long before they can be investigated and as a rule no recorded
history is available. One government herd, however, has been investigated and reinvestigated for
more than a decade and while, like those of the last sub-head, the results of their investigations are
largely speculative ; as they not only typify some problems of goat abortion, but also parallel the
enigmas of buffalo abortion they merit a short critical review.*
The herd in question was founded in the summer 1928, mainly with in-kid goats purchased from
around Gujranwala but about 20 local goats were already on the farm as early as April of that year.
In the same autumn one local and four purchased goats aborted, and abortions have continued to the
present day. Both then and since, undoubted Brucellosis has been prevalent in a large cow-herd
grazing the same forest, and, although the occurrence of Brucellosis in some at least of the goats is
irrefutable, many attempts have been made to prove that the actual abortions are due to some other
cause. The reasons for this are threefold viz., (1) with the exception of one dubious record, many
careful attempts to isolate Brucella from the goats have failed. (2) The serum agglutination test
has given irregular and, at times, meagre proof of Brucella infection. (3) At times, aborting goats
have shown symptoms of other diseases, notably metritis and mastitis, thus suggesting a different
aetiology.
To anyone familiar with the difficulties of isolating Brucella from goats in India, item (1) will
appear insignificant, and if, indeed, for many valid reasons, it has been impossible to isolate Brucella,
it has been equally impossible to secure a substitute pathogen, or even to offer the least vestige of a
substitute pathology. A new pathology might, at first sight, be thought to appear in item (3) in as
much as, out of 66 goats aborting between 1929 and 1935, 17 were stated to have died of metritis
within a month or so of parturition : on the other hand no such deaths have been reported since 1935,
and none occurred in a big abortion outbreak in 1943. Indeed, the records show that metritis is a
wholly inconstant complication.
As for the agglütination test, several fairly plain concepts can be constructed from the records.
Firstly the periods during which infected goats remained blood-positive have been very short ; e.g.
of 53 goats, 28 reacted on one occasion, 15 on two occasions, 10 on three and 0 on four occasions, when
*Many of the records used here are due to the work (unpublished) of M. Abdussalam, L.V.P. who carefully investigated
the problem in 1936 ; his kindness in permitting their use is gratefully acknowledged.
K2