32
animals are being worked and given a drink from some scanty water-accumulation.
I do not think that a good full tank or a well with a fair amount of water in it will
be likely ever to convey the disease; marshy pools, stagnant tanks, streams with very
sluggish current, and stagnant accumulations of water whenever and wherever they
occur are to be looked on with most suspicion. A priori we may argue that water,
especially in tropical countries, is a fruitfal conveyer of disease ; that the spirilloids are
just such organisms as we might expect to invade the system from stagnant water and
marsh soil; that Lower Burma is specially the abode of marsh and malaria; and that
the substitution of well water for that in tanks at the Rangoon lines has been considered
beneficial. The argument that the disease died out at the dep6t after substitution of
well—for tank—water has been now proved unsubstantial, for the disease seems annually
to practically disappear in the spring, even when no change is made in the source of
drinking water. We must constantly retain in mind that we have not yet sufficiently
exact evidence of when the disease begins to enable us to associate the cases directly
with any special physical and climatic conditions, The water of many of the marshy
tanks around the .Rangoon lines is bad enough to account for any amount of disease ;
but here, again, we must remember that private ponies receive water from most filthy-
looking sources, seldom under their owners' supervision, and they have not suffered
from relapsing fever to any marked extent. We must conclude that, although it is
highly probable that the drinking water is a source of the disease, in many cases we
cannot point to any special water-accumulation to be shunned on this account. All
stagnant water and foul tanks are to be avoided, and the use of water from wells
resorted to whenever possible.
28. Diet may predispose to fever by being defective in quantity, for an animal
with an empty stomach is more liable to take specific disease than one with a full
stomach; the method of preparation of food may be so defective as to prevent its
nutriment being properly extracted so as to support the system and give it disease
resisting power. The food of mules at Tonghoo and .Rangoon at the time of attack
in 1884 was open to much improvement, both as regards quantity and mode of
preparation. But we cannot look upon feeding defects as having much influence on
the prevalence of this disorder; they are coincident circumstances rather than actual
causes of the outbreak, although we must not forget that the near ally of this disease
in man is called by the very significant name " Famine fever."*
Coarse indigestible food given to old animals with defective
dental apparatus may have actually produced ulcers of the
stomach and so provided an opening through which the parasites
have gained ready access to the system ; this effect might reasonably be attributed to
prolonged use of rice-straw as fodder or of totally unprepared paddy. These irritants
acting on the stomach for a long time might predispose it to undergo degenerative
changes. At times the animals have been without nosebags, their gram being thrown
on the floor of the stable and the mules within reach allowed to scramble for it. This
would give a chance of the gram ingested being contaminated with floor impurities
and possibly among them spirilloids or their spores. The floors being kept very clean
must materially have lessened the liability to take the disease from this source in the
case in question, but the chance remains. With regard to fodder : the Tonghoo mules
began to fall sick after they had for at least six months received as fodder from
the Commissariat only 13—15 lb. of paddy-straw per diem. This article of diet is,
unless chopped, quite unsuited for mules, being irritant to the stomach and affording
little nutriment, if any. It comes from land which, in accordance with the necessities
of rice culture, is for many months in the year an excellent nidus for growth of low
organisms, but that it is not deleteriously affected thereby would be proved by the
fact that it affords excellent fodder for bullocks if we had not experimentally demon-
strated that those animals take equine relapsing fever only with very great difficulty if
at all, probably because of the small size of their red corpuscles. In Rangoon the
fodder has been, during my stay, tank grass dry or tank grass wet, and previously the
long rank grass collected from the broad Burmese paddy bunds was supplied in its
naturally dried state (after its seeds had been shed to secure a next year's crop) as
hay ! Wet tank grass is deficient in nutritive principles in proportion to bulk, but
when cut properly, only the part above water being used, is good fodder. However, the
* In man also it not un-
frequently occurs that well-
fed individuals succumb to
relapsing fever.