4
20. In horses the contagious diseases Glanders and Surra were much more
prevalent than they have ever been reported to be before.
There are no columns in the Cattle Mortality Register maintained by village
officers in this Presidency for Glanders and Dourine and the figures of Surra reported
by the village officers vary considerably from the real state of things ; so that,
partly for this reason and partly because it is often found difficult to obtain correct
figures of mortality from contagious diseases even in cattle in large towns through
the Agency of village munsifs, Collectors have been asked their opinion as to
the advisability of making it incumbent on municipalities, where such bodies exist, to
report the outbreak of a contagious disease amongst animals within their limits.
The result of the correspondence will be reported to Government when all replies
have been received.
21. Rinderpest—A perusal of Table XV will disclose the fact that Rinderpest
has increased in severity in this Presidency during each of the last five years until
the large figure of 30,733 reported deaths was reached during the year under report.
The staff received 1,268 reports of the disease, attended 1,069 of them and
inoculated 97,516 animals against it, in the course of 613 of the outbreaks attended.
In 1916-17 the figures of inoculation were 100,463.
The reasons for not attending the other reports is being ascertained but it may
be assumed that it is usually because the disease subsides in some villages before the
Assistant has time to visit them owing to the number of reports on hand.
22. The result of disbanding the Rinderpest Mobile Corps and posting the
members of it to new permanent touring billets in Kistna and Guntūr districts has
been satisfactory as far as those districts are concerned, for although each of them
reports a fairly large number of deaths from this disease it did not cause so much
trouble as in other districts where the permanent staff was less. The reduction in
the size of touring Assistants' charges makes it much easier for the inspecting officers
to control them and enables the Assistants to attend outbreaks more promptly.
In Kistna, where five touring Assistants were working during the year, 133
reports of Rinderpest were attended out of 139 received and 21,357 inoculations were
performed against it.
23. The districts where the disease caused most trouble during the year were
Anantapur, North and South Arcot, South Kanara, Malabar and Chingleput, and in
each of these additional Assistants were posted to work from the reserve staff. It
was proved beyond a doubt that the primary infection in each of the frontier districts
mentioned came from Mysore, it being carried into this Presidency by cattle either
returning from grazing as in Anantapur district, or being brought for sale to some of
the numerous cattle fairs held in this Presidency such as those of North Arcot, South
Arcot, Chingleput and South Kanara districts.
24. It is now a routine procedure for this office to suggest to the Collector, on
the outbreak of Rinderpest in a district, that the cattle fairs and markets be closed for
the time being, but the advice is not always taken and there is no doubt that this
helped to spread the disease in some of the districts referred to during the past year.
Owing to the continual stream of cattle moving southwards from fair to fair it has
now reached the most southern districts and there is now no district in the Presidency
which has not been affected by Rinderpest during the past four years.
25. The fact that the southern districts of this Presidency have not been visited
by a widespread outbreak of the disease for some years very probably accounts for
the high mortality which is now being experienced in them and it is reasonable to
hope that when the present epidemic has passed away, leaving behind it a more or
less immune generation of cattle, it will be some time before the same trouble is met
with again.
26. The report of Mr. Shilston, second Bacteriologist, Muktesar Laboratory, who
toured here in connexion with Rinderpest in January 1917, was received and dealt
with during the year under review.
His chief recommendation was that the ' serum simultaneous' method of inocu
lation should be adopted in this Presidency for the cattle of those desiring to have
their animals permanently immunised. The superior staff of this department will