March, 1956]
SYED
MOHIYUDDEEN
15
Madras State and the " undiagnosed disease "of cattle of north Kanara district,
Bombay State. The regional and seasonal conditions of these contiguous tracts of
Mysore, Madras and Bombay States being almost identical, the animals of these
hilly and heavy rainfall tracts are subjected to the same environmental conditions.
The observations made so far in Mysore State and those reported from Madras and
Bombay States regarding bovine paraplegia indicate that the obscure disease of
cattle in the contiguous areas of all the three States may be one and the same and,
therefore, the endemic zone for this disease could be demarcated as comprising
contiguous areas of Shimoga, south Kanara and north Kanara districts of Mysore,
Madras and Bombay States respectively.
DIFFERNTIAL DIAGNOSIS
Haemorrhagic septicaemia : All cases of bovine paraplegia studied in Mysore
had an afebrile course and no lesions in the lungs were observed. Microscopic
and cultural examination of heart blood collected from four typical cases immediately
after death of the animals were found negative for pasteurella organisms.
Besides, blood drawn from a typical case only a few hours before death was injected
into a rabbit which remained unaffected for 3 weeks during which it was kept under
observation after injection. Haemorrhagic septicaemia in whatever form it might
be, being a septicaemic disease, its casual organisms could neither escape detection
in heart blood cultures made soon after the death of the animals nor in the rabbit
inoculation test with the blood from a typical case drawn just a few hours before
death.
Contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia
Post-mortem examination of four typical cases of bovine paraplegia did not reveal
any pneumonic lesions in the lungs.
Sections of lung tissue were normal in
histological features except for slight congestion. In two cases much laboured
breathing was observed just before death suggesting some lung lesions, but on
post-mortem examination lungs were found perfectly normal. The symptoms of
respiratory distress observed appeared to be due to paralysis of diaphragm and other
respiratory muscles rather than to pneumonic lesions in the lungs.
Acute theileriasis and anaplasmosis
Bovine paraplegia was always a non-febrile condition whether it was acute,
where the onset of paralysis was sudden, or subacute and chronic. Such an afeb-
rile condition could not be associated with the infection of blood protozoan parasites
like piroplasms. Besides, peripheral blood smears taken just before death and
heart blood smears taken soon after death did not reveal either Theileria or Ana-
plasma like bodies in red blood corpuscles and Koch's blue bodies in spleen in spite
of detailed microscopic examination. Thus the possibility of this obscure disease
being either the pulmonary form of haemorrhagic septicaemia or contagious bovine
pleuro-pneumonia or acute theileriasis or anaplasmosis was definitely ruled out by
systematic investigation.
Latent trypanosomiasis
Trypanosomes in bovines may not appear in peripheral circulation and hence
may not be detected by examination of blood smears only, as the parasites get into
deeper tissues like cerebrospinal and reticulo-endothelial systems. To eliminate