A PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CUTANEOUS RINDERPEST
By A. D. MACGREGOR, F.R.C.V.S. Principal, Bengal Veterinary College
(Received for publication on 13 August 1943)
(With Plate IX)
THE above is admittedly a coined title, and
although only to some extent permissible, it
explains more clearly than any other the subject-
matter of this article.
During a rather desultory study of the history
of rinderpest in India from the mass of provincial
and other
records, a striking similarity
appeared to prevail in the local names of this
disease. The word ' rinderpest ' for this disease
(rinder—plural of rind—ox) is clearly foreign to
India, giving little indication of symptoms or
anything else beyond its being a pest affecting
oxen. It seemed palpable that the terminology
of this country, at least, was much more to the
point and symbolic of the disease, for, in addition
to meaning a disease of oxen, the word mata,
in more or less universal use throughout India
for the disease, means 'pox' from apparently the
original religious conception that mata, being the
mother-goddess of this disease, should be invoked
by the use of her name for the good of the
animal so afflicted. Other Indian names, such as
gau-bashanto and guti in Bengali, however, do not
take on quite the same religious veneer, for
bashanto means initially the Spring, although in
process of time it has come to mean 'pox'—gau
meaning cattle, hence cattle-pox in the spring
time. This might be conceded to imply that a
form of pox occurred mostly in the spring and was
therefore, seasonal. Guti literally means in Bengali
a visible nodule—again most clearly a cutaneous
eruption. To all intents and purposes, therefore,
all the names which have adhered to this disease
for thousands of years, point to the same con-
clusion, that rinderpest has been looked upon as a
disease of the epidermis and not, as is today most
definitely patent, a frequently fatal affection of
the alimentary tract. And it is by no means
beyond conjecture that the patois of countries
outside Bengal, and India even, may prove, on
further etymological research, that an equal
dissimilarity exists between present-day concep-
tions of clinical rinderpest and the local names
applied to it. For instance, in East Africa the
local term is also reported to mean literally 'pox'
and the same holds good for Java and the Dutch
East Indies. However, without straining the
point unduly, it seems reasonable to suggest that
a period of some thousand or more years has
changed the picture of rinderpest from a more or
less benign cutaneous affection to the much more
fatal alimentary syndrome met with today and
significantly without change or modification of
its traditional names. On still further analysis
of this surmize, there is presumptive evidence to
suggest that in the wider spaces of the earth's
surface a distinction even today exists between
cutaneous forms of this disease and those confined
symptomatically to the alimentary tract. Hutyra
and Marek [1926] record the incidence of two
distinct types of rinderpest in Russia.
' Russian authors attached much importance to
the occurrence of this affection in cattle of the
steppes and distinguished an exanthematous and
non-exanthematous form of rinderpest ; and also,
in accordance with former medical opinion,
regarded the appearance of the exanthem as a
favourable sign in prognosis (the exanthem
usually develops in protracted and therefore
milder cases, as Croveri has recently proved in
Africa). The cutaneous eruption is common in
the course of some outbreaks, rare in others;
thus Vrijburg never observed it in the West
Indies, while Gartner in East Africa found it so
common that the natives call the disease 'pox'
(djedri). It also occurs in highly bred cattle
independently of the course of the disease.'
It might quite reasonably be suggested that the
retention of the above note in modern literature
has been the result of neglect on the part of more
recent authors to delete an obsolete and un-
important reference, hence its survival; but it
will have to be conceded that on a more intimate
investigation of cause and effect the repeated
report of the existence of two distinct forms of
rinderpest in Russia—as described above is in
keeping absolutely with our recent findings in
Bengal.
But let us not confuse things over such a slender
thread of coincidence ; the discovery of the
existence of a cutaneous form of rinderpest in
Bengal is unquestionably new and is reported
here for the first time, but that by no means
infers that this form has only just arisen. It
has clearly been going on for centuries, as in
Russia presumably, but has only been brought to
light today in this country, being on the wane
in its percentage of incidence as compared possibly
with that of a thousand years ago. Even today
in Bengal, the number of cattle in an average
outbreak of rinderpest showing cutaneous lesions
may be from nil to 30 per cent; more often it
is from 5 per cent to 10 per cent. It is therefore,
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