NationalLibraryOfScotland/medical-history-of-british-india huggingface dataset:
62
While at the latter place, i.e., Sitapore, 50 young stock varying
from 10 to 15 months were inoculated during the first week in
January last with the following results:—
Class of animal
Young stock, ¼ to 3/8 imported blood . .
„
„
cross-bred .
.
.
.
„
„
buffaloes
.
.
.
.
TOTAL .
Inoculated
33
8
9
50
Died
5
nil
nil
5
Percentage of
mortality
15.1
nil
nil
10
"Now in view of the fact that these two sets of inoculations
were carried out by officers in whom I have every confidence, it
must be admitted that the results are far from satisfactory and as
I am further informed that serious casualties occurred following on
serum simultaneous inoculations at the Government dairy farm
at Karnal, we are naturally becoming greatly alarmed.
"In the case of the casualties at Allahabad, the Veterinary
Officer, Major P. V. Beatty, R.A.V.C., states that most of the
animals, which died, did so after showing typical rinderpest symp-
toms. Blood smears from two of the cases were examined and
although one animal showed symptoms of red-water previous to
death the results of the microscopical examination of the blood
are reported to have been negative.
"In the case of Sitapore, where the inoculations were carried
out by Captain T. F. Arnold, R.A.V.C., (who in view of the recent
unsatisfactory results at Allahabad was specially warned by me
to be most careful with these inoculations), 10 of the half-bred
animals were unfortunately in poor condition, but he reports that
they appeared to be strong enough to be inoculated. He further
stated that most of the animals inoculated showed a temperature
reaction after 24 to 36 hours and some of the cattle and all the
buffaloes gave a clinical reaction on the third day; the clinical
reaction was a mucopurulent catarrh of the eyes and in one case
63
only diarrhœa. The following note is given regarding the animals
which died:—
No.
528
78
510
527
520
Breed
3/8
½
¼
½
½
Date of death
2-3rd night . .
4th mid-day . .
5th morning . .
4th morning . .
5th evening . .
Cause of death
Probably shock or toxoemia, this animal
was one of the 10 in poor condition.
Piroplasms found but no
temperature
reaction, probably toxoemia.
Piroplasms found on 4th and 100 C. C.
3 per cent. trypanblue giving intraven-
ously.
Probably toxoemia.
Blood examined but
no piroplasms found.
Only off feed day preceding death.
"In forwarding the veterinary officer's report on these inocula-
tions to the Director of Veterinary Services in India I made the
following comment:—'As will be seen, five animals out of 50
died, i.e., 10 per cent. Whether these animals died from toxoemia,
piroplasmosis or rinderpest there appears to be little doubt that
had they not been inoculated they would not have died.'
"As it is stated in para 10 of Bulletin No. 120 of 1921 from the
Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, that the total mortality
after the serum simultaneous method of inoculation against rinder-
pest has been under 0.8 per cent. it appears to me that if the high
percentage of casualties which have occurred during recent inocula-
tions at Allahabad, Karnal and Sitapore is accepted as being due
to latent piroplasmosis aggravated by the serum inoculations,
some wholesale prophylactic measures such as dippings should be
taken to deal with piroplasmosis amongst cattle in this country
before the serum simultaneous method of inoculation against
rinderpest is continued.
"Gentlemen, I can assure you that as the serum simultaneous
method of inoculation is the only form of inoculation which is
guaranteed to give a lasting immunity, we are most anxious to
make this form of inoculation a success. Veterinary officers have
been sent to the Imperial Bacteriological Laboratory, Muktesar,
for special instruction in the modus operandi; the instructions
laid down for the inoculation have been carefully complied with
and special serum was obtained for these inoculations; but in the
face of such casualties as we have recently had I cannot agree to
continuing this method of inoculation until the causes of the high
percentage of the fatalities are made quite clear and until we are
E 2
64
in a position to ensure better results. Whether the fault lies with
the serum or not I am not prepared to say, but at the request of
Mr. Edwards all the serum remaining over from these inoculations
has been returned to him for examination and he will no doubt
inform you what are the results of this enquiry."
Mr. Hewlett stated that he was under the impression that for
a number of years the inoculation at the military dairies had been
in charge of a Veterinary Deputy Superintendent (Mr. V. E.
Phadke, G.B.V.C.), deputed from Muktesar for the work and that
although several thousand cattle had been inoculated, the morta-
lity was extremely small.
Mr. Smith stated that Mr. Phadke from Muktesar had inocu-
lated in his group of military dairies about 2,500 head of cattle
and that the mortality was not 1 per cent. The mortality among
Ayrshire cattle was extremely small. He complimented this
officer for the large amount of time he spent and trouble he took
with the cattle during the process of inoculation and his constant
solicitude for any evidence of piroplasmosis. He mentioned a
very bad outbreak which he had experienced at Mhow. About
120 animals were put into the rinderpest camp and treated with
serum and not one of those animals became subsequently infected
with the disease.
Mr. Ware stated that he had begun this method of simultaneous
inoculation in Madras in 1918, and since that year over 400 animals
had been inoculated. Those inoculated included one Ayrshire
bull. During this season he had inoculated in one camp over 100
cattle, at the Agricultural Farm, Coimbatore. The inoculated
cattle subsequently suffered from severe reactions although he had
taken all reasonable precautions with regard to the inoculations.
None of the inoculated animals, however, died. Out of the 400
animals which had now been inoculated only one small calf had
died. In the inoculated animals, however, piroplasmosis made its
appearance very often. In the districts he had hitherto inoculated
only about 25 animals in one camp. He experienced very great
difficulty in securing the necessary degree of isolation for the animals
while they were under process of immunization.
Mr. Branford did not consider that there was much danger of
the disease spreading during the process of immunization if simple
measures were taken to prevent the spread.
Mr. Ware stated that he had recommended a certain budget
allotment in Madras for the purpose of adopting this method of
inoculation. It seemed that in future it would be difficult in his
province to resort to the "serum alone" method on the same
65
large scale as it had hitherto been employed on account of the fact
that the Government had now decided to charge a fee for it, and
it was probable that in future the numbers of animals that would
be inoculated by the simultaneous method would be increased and
that the numbers done by the "serum alone" method would be
reduced.
Mr. Riley stated that he had carried out the double inoculation
on two occasions after having studied the method at Muktesar.
In his experience the process gave rise to considerable anxiety
when the inoculated animals contained imported blood. While
he was in charge of the inoculation of the Pusa herd he was for-
tunate in having every facility for the task and the work was carried
out successfully, with no deaths subsequently. He was very
careful to examine the blood of the inoculated animals for piroplas-
mosis when they exhibited a rise of temperature and also to have
them properly housed at night time. At the agricultural farm
attached to the Asylum at Ranchi he had likewise obtained very
great facilities for carrying out the work, but the inoculation was
performed late in the year in April. The animals were country
bred animals and their temperatures subsequently ran up extra-
ordinarily high, to 107º or 108º F., but there were no deaths. He
lost three "controls" (virus producers) out of four. He considered
that work of this kind could not be carried out in the field in
Bihar unless some method could be evolved to eliminate the use
of "controls". He obtained fresh virulent blood for the work
from Bareilly. The use of "controls" in distant centres made it
impossible to undertake the work.
Mr. Farbrother stated that he had no personal experience of the
inoculation, but one of his Veterinary Deputy Superintendents,
Mr. Vacha, had performed the work in the Bombay Presidency
at a certain place quite recently where 66 cattle had to be inoculated.
He was entirely successful with the work, but what struck him
(the speaker) was the period of time which was required, namely,
about three weeks, to carry out the work. The method was, there-
fore, impracticable in the districts. In any event it would hardly
be possible to recommend legislation for the adoption of the method
on a larger scale.
Mr. Ware raised the question as to the best method of provid-
ing virus for the districts.
Mr. Quinlan asked Col. Pallin about the conditions under which
the animals in the Sitapur and Allahabad outbreaks were housed,
because in his experience animals affected with even a mild form
of rinderpest were liable to succumb if proper attention was not
paid to the housing.
66
Col. Pallin stated that special chuppers were built for these.
animals as they were showing signs of weakness and the weather
was cold.
Mr. Quinlan was particularly emphatic that it was very neces-
sary to pay attention to the housing of animals during the rinder-
pest reaction.
Col. Pallin stated that it would be of great assistance to him
to have the indications for carrying out the method redrafted as
had been promised by Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Smith wished to lay particular emphasis on the feeding
of animals while they were under the process of immunization.
He had found it necessary to place them on laxative diet consisting
of bran mash and treacle and to omit hard food such as grain, etc.
Mr. Davis asked Mr. Edwards what the method was in use at
present in Upper East Africa where he believed transport difficul-
ties were much greater.
Mr. Branford believed that the department was not yet strong
enough to undertake the work of serum simultaneous inoculation
in the districts.
Mr. Hewlett again emphasized that the serum simultaneous
method should be used in large dairies and in other concerns of
this kind, but he held out no hope of successfully dealing with
rinderpest by the use of serum alone in the manner it was now
generally adopted.
Mr. Edwards stated that the exceptionally heavy mortality
which had occurred at certain military dairies during the present
season had caused him a great deal of anxiety, and searching tests
were being carried out at the laboratory in order to investigate the
origin of these accidents. In the outbreak first reported—from the
Karnal military dairy—the officer in charge had communicated to
him detailed reports of the animals under inoculation, and the
evidence seemed to show that some condition other than rinderpest
was accountable for the mortality; the animals which succumbed
developed symptoms very early—within a day or two—of the
inoculation and deaths commenced within three days. The typical
symptoms of rinderpest—buccal lesions and diarrhœa—were gener-
ally absent, and hæmoglobinuria was a prominent symptom. The
officer in charge was convinced that acute piroplasmosis was the
cause of the deaths. No piroplasms, however, had been detected
in a few smears which he (the speaker) had received for examination.
He was not prepared yet to express any definite opinion upon the
cause of these deaths, but in many of the dairies he believed that the
records indicated that a condition developed which could not be
67
definitely asserted to be rinderpest. In the Allahabad outbreak,
however, undoubted symptoms of rinderpest did develop in many of
the cases which succumbed later during the course of observations,
but in many of the fatalities occurring elsewhere the records pointed
to the development of a condition with acute blood destruction. He
had already retested a sample of serum returned from the Allahabad
dairy and found it to be protective at the dosage stipulated at issue,
but there had been quite an appreciable falling off in potency since
the time of the original test. He had been much exercised about
the manufacture of potent serum since he had taken over charge of
the laboratory, particularly as he had lost a short time after his
arrival the collaboration of Mr. Pool, who had evinced during his
tenure of office at the laboratory such extraordinary solicitude in this
matter that his competence was probably unrivalled. He had thus,
soon after Mr. Pool's departure, taken in hand the personal super-
vision of the manufacture and testing of all rinderpest serum and
made provision, as he thought, for the issue of anti-rinderpest
serum from the laboratory of sufficiently high potency so that it
could all be used safely for the "serum simultaneous" inoculation.
The occurrence of excessive mortality in the military dairies this
season had therefore come as a considerable surprise, and he was
sparing no pains to obtain information upon it which would enable
him to take steps to obviate these accidents in future. The results
of his investigations would be fully reported upon later. In order to
test the safety of the method with the use of the materials produced
at the laboratory he had deputed one of his colleagues (Mr. Bennett)
to carry out under his directions the immunization of the valuable
Pusa herd of cattle, comprising Montgomery and cross-bred Ayr-
shire-Montgomery cattle, and the results, upon 80 animals, which
he had only just learnt, had been completely successful.
A priori, there would appear to be no reason to fear any accident
following upon the simultaneous inoculation provided an adequately
large dose of a sufficiently highly potent anti-rinderpest serum were
injected into the animal at the same time as the small dose of virulent
rinderpest blood. There was a great deal of recorded evidence
forthcoming from other countries pointing to the relative safety
and extraordinary efficacy of the method when applied to a consider-
able cattle population; he had in mind particularly the results
achieved in Egypt, in East Africa, and towards the conclusion of
the war in the zone bordering the southern limits of the territory
formerly known as German East Africa where the application of the
method effectually prevented the southward extension of rinderpest
into Southern Africa. In the Italian colony of Eritrea the wholesale
inoculation of all the cattle population every two years by this
method had been recommended. Moreover, the evidence showed.
68
that the simultaneous method conferred an immunity which was in
all probability life-long, whereas inoculation with serum alone as had
recently been clearly demonstrated by Messrs. Pool and Doyle
gave the animal an immunity which could be depended upon to
give it a sure protection for a period of only nine days. Having
in mind the durability of the protection conferred by the simultane-
ous method and its recorded comparative safety elsewhere where
it had been tested on very large numbers of cattle there could be
no doubt that this was the method of choice for combating
rinderpest in India, and if the method were systematically adopted
throughout the country there seemed to be no reason why the disease
should not soon become extinct. The difficulties which stood in
the way of its universal application, notably the prejudices and
apprehensions of owners, had been pointed out by previous
speakers.
In spite of the knowledge available with regard to efficacy of the
method it was, however, well known that its adoption was not always
free from danger. In the first place, there was danger of setting
up fatal rinderpest unless the serum injected simultaneously was of
certainly dependable potency. The manufacture of a serum of the
required potency did not appear to be an easy task, for the experience
of his laboratory had recently been that in spite of repeated massive
hyperimmunization the serum obtained from the serum producers
gradually fell off in potency after the early bleedings, so that great
care had to be taken not to issue serum for the simultaneous method
obtained from later bleedings. However, with a highly potent
serum, it had often been found possible to mask completely the
reaction following upon the injection of a rinderpest blood of high
virulence, and the inoculated animal was found subsequently to be
immune. He had found also that the practice of utilizing buffaloes
for serum production and hill bulls as virus producers, although it
had been found an economical procedure for the manufacture of
serum for preventive purposes, had a drawback in that the serum
of the buffalo became markedly hæmolytic for the blood of the ox
after repeated hyperimmunization.* For the simultaneous inocula-
tion of cattle, where large doses of serum had often to be injected
into animals of high susceptibility, he believed that special care
should be taken to issue only sera specially prepared and tested as
to a high degree of potency from cattle (hill bulls), or sera from the
first bleeding, exclusively, of buffaloes.
The risk due to intercurrent piroplasmosis was well known, and
the appearance of so-called "redwater," due to Babesia bigeminum
* Researches carried out at the laboratory subsequently indicated that this view of the
origin of the accidents was justified. J. T. E., November 1923.
69
or other piroplasms, might be twofold in origin: first, the virulent
blood itself might contain infective piroplasms, in which case symp-
toms of redwater would occur after an incubation period of seven to
nine days, while on the other hand, the inoculated animal might suffer
an attack of acute piroplasmosis due to the resuscitation in virulence,
owing to the depressant effect of the rinderpest infection, of piro-
plasms lying dormant in the animal's system and kept in a latent
state subsequent to a former, natural piroplasm infection,—in
which event the symptoms might appear at any time, early or late,
during the course of the reaction. The very common small piro-
plasms Theileria mutans, that frequently appeared in the blood
of inoculated cattle, did not seem to exert an invariably distinctly
prejudicial effect.
He had again been perturbed concerning the possibility of
mutation in the virus, for it was well known that in other diseases
due to filterable viruses—horse-sickness, in particular, swine fever,
and, according to recent reports of French investigators, the foot
and mouth disease virus—various strains existed which differed
greatly in their behaviour towards a protective serum prepared
against a single strain. He was conducting experiments bearing
upon this point, but had hitherto obtained no evidence of such
mutation.
As had been said before, the information of other countries
appeared to show that with few precautions the mortality rate due
to any of these factors was a very small one when large numbers of
cattle were inoculated, and in other countries the prolonged observa-
tion of inoculated cattle which was generally undertaken in India
was not usually made. He had already performed the simultaneous
inoculation quite successfully upon a number of young calves kindly
sent to him for this purpose by Colonel Matson, Controller, Military
Dairy Farms, and upon calves specially reared at the laboratory.
He proposed to test the durability of the immunity conferred upon
these calves at various intervals; tests hitherto conducted showed
that it remained solid for a year, and there was no reason to believe
that it would not last many years. A great advantage of immun-
izing young calves in this manner was, as was well known, their
relatively high resistance towards the severe effects of an accident-
ally transmitted redwater infection.
Although the "serum simultaneous" method was the method of
choice where it could be applied, the "serum alone" method had
its indications for adoption and he saw no reason why this method
should not be pursued to the utmost possible extent pending the
development of circumstances favourable for the general application
of the former method. In the first place, anti-rinderpest serum
70
properly prepared and tested, was one of most reliable products
judged by its efficacy known to prophylaxis. The protection
conferred by it was certain and immediate, and in the scene of an
outbreak it was the method that should always be applied to cattle
exposed to infection. If cattle protected in this manner were
immediately allowed free intercourse with infected animals there
was a chance that they might contract infection, and develop a
durable immunity of the kind conferred by the simultaneous
inoculation; but experience had shown that it was well not to put
much dependence on this eventuality, and that it was better to
repeat the serum inoculation at intervals of nine or ten days while
the outbreak persisted. The judicious use of serum alone upon all
exposed cattle in this matter would undoubtedly bring about
the limitation and extinction of outbreaks, as was accomplished
by Mr. Smith in the military dairies. The serum issued from the
Muktesar laboratory was all rigorously tested as to its efficacy
for this purpose, and workers in the field had to see to it that the
serum used by them was not such as had deteriorated by prolonged
or improper storage and was administered in the dosages indicated
by the susceptibility of the inoculated animals.
Further, he stated that as rinderpest was the most important
single disease of live stock in India he had marshalled the resources
of the Muktesar laboratory for the investigation of the disease,
for its etiology was still obscure beyond the fact that it was usually
held to be due to a filterable virus and he described the progress of
the work done.
A small committee was then formed consisting of Messrs. Harris,
Quinlan and Cameron with Mr. Edwards as Secretary to draft the
terms of a resolution embodying the views of the meeting.
The resolution, passed unanimously by the meeting, was as
follows:—
Resolution II (b)
(1) That the process of active immunization against rinderpest
by the so-called serum simultaneous method should be
prosecuted with the utmost vigour, whenever possible,
as it represents the only means at present known of
conferring a satisfactory permanent immunity upon
susceptible animals.
(2) That in the districts, however, the time is not yet opportune
for the wholesale performance of this method of immuni-
zation, as the occasional accidents which follow upon its
adoption might hinder, in view of the prejudices of the
smaller owners, the eventual universal adoption of the
method.