5
just as surra in British. Burma is ! The balance of evidence tends to the view that
relapsing fever is not a disease new to British Burma. It is almost impossible to
exactly establish this position, because so little has been known of animal diseases in
Burma until quite recently. The evidence of Veterinary Surgeon (First-class) E.
Frost, however, would seem to point to its being a new disease, for, although
he has been engaged professionally in Burma for some eight years, the disease is
new to him; he has never seen a case before which he can recall to his mind. But
his professional work has been among animals proved by experience to be least liable
to it, namely, the animals housed in private stables receiving individual attention from
people in charge of them. During my stay in Burma I heard of two cases at Rangoon
in ponies belonging to private individuals. I did not see them, but there could be
little doubt as to their nature. I have seen wretched shadows of ponies grazing in
the marshes which strongly reminded me of my patients. The mortality among
ghari ponies and others belonging to poor people is high, if we may judge from the
not infrequent sight of a carcase by the side of the road in the early morning. These
people view the loss of a pony as a " visitation from God" and enter no further into
the cause of it, although there is a tradition among them, which I have heard of two or
three times, that the ghari-owners could not keep their ponies alive until they hit on
the expedient of giving them some gram with the paddy ration. Tonghoo seems from
report to be a very unhealthy place for ponies, and, if for them, how much more for
imported mules ! This question of whether the disease is new to Burma is of some
practical importance, for it has been suggested that the transport mules may have
brought the disease with them from India, especially the Punjab, in which neighbour-
hood it is well known to horse-owners and cavalry officers. But, apart from the high
probability that the disease is not contagious, as will be demonstrated hereafter, we
have the significant facts in this relation that the mules at Tonghoo and of the Euro-
pean Infantry at Rangoon were not, like those of the Rangoon Supply Depot, subjected
to the outbreak the year of their arrival into the country; also that it has not yet
appeared among the sappers' mules at Rangoon, the artillery at Tonghoo, or the
animals at Thayetmyo and Moulmein. It rather seems that the mules came from
India with good constitutions, in exact proportion to which, plus the care taken of
their health, plus the healthiness of the station to which they were posted, has been
their freedom from disease. According to this view it is possible that it may next
season extend to the stations and corps which have not yet suffered from its ravages,
and we cannot yet give an opinion as to whether removal of mules from Tonghoo and
Rangoon to Moulmein and Thayetmyo would prevent recurrence of the disorder; it
seems not unlikely that aggregation of a large number at Moulmein would render it the
seat of an outbreak from which it is now exempted by the very small number of trans-
port animals there. Thayetmyo has stood this test satisfactorily for two years and will
probably be found an excellent centre for mule transport.
7. The serious mortality at Rangoon in 1883 was reported on (under date 9th
November 1883, No. 1693,) by Veterinary Surgeon (First-class) Frost, then in
veterinary charge of the British Burma Transport. He states that the disease from
which so many mules have died within the last month or six weeks was ulceration of
the stomach, generally confined to the left sac, but in some instances the ulceration
extended to both sacs, no traces of disease being found either in the gullet or in the
intestines. Some cases were acute, others chronic. He considered it due to some-
thing deleterious in grain, grass, or water (the latter especially). He thought that the
exposure to which the depôt mules were subjected during the height of the monsoon,
when quarantined at Kokine, rendered them susceptible; as a matter of fact they
went out in good condition and came back in bad. In accordance with his sugges-
tions, Major Hill, Deputy Assistant Commissary-General for Transport, removed the
mules and ponies from the dep6t and had them watered from a different tank. Inspect-
ing Veterinary Surgeon Evans was referred to in the matter and was " inclined to
think that the disease was parasitic " (vide Commissary-General Macgrath's letter to
Quartermaster-General, No. 2412 T.B., dated 18th January 1884). Inspecting Veter-
inary Surgeon Shaw was, in the commencement of 1884, deputed to inquire into the
disease. He arrived at Rangoon in April 1884, but, as the last fatal case at the depot
had terminated on 14th February 1884, the disease was not then present. He
concluded from such evidence as was available that the symptoms and post-mortem
2