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fatal disease known by several names, such as klanhog doaia and surra, depending
upon the several stages. Phipri is another name by which it is known among camels.
I know of no reason for saying that the fly causes the disease except the common
tradition of my people. The symptoms of the three stages of the disease in the camel
are these :—1st staye—khanhog :—refusing food for one week; sluggish, with the urine
of high color. Sometimes they get well from this stage if treated early, but at this
stage we cannot be sure whether it is the beginning of surra or some other disease. If
the medicine does no good, they swell all over the chest, which is the 2nd stage,
called doaia. The 3rd stage, called surra, is when the swelling increases and extends
all over the abdomen and legs, when they rapidly waste and their recovery is hopeless.
If a camel ever recovers from surra, he is useless for two years after. The urine
usually remains high-colored during the hot season, and becomes natural in the cold
weather. The urine is often very thick in surra because the flesh passes out of the
body in that way. The duration of each stage is very various : in severe cases they
die in a week, in milder they live two or four weeks; in still milder, they live two or
three months ; they hardly ever live four months. The treatment adopted is a bitter
extract made by boiling the leaf of a tree called sivah or vunna, growing in the hills ;
the extract is given mixed with butter.''
22. I do not know whether dogs are affected with this disease naturally, but I
succeeded in communicating it to dogs, from a horse, by inoculation {vide appendix I).
23. I took every opportunity of asking the zamindars at the outposts whether they
knew of the disease among horned cattle and donkeys, and they all assured me in the
negative. Colonel McLean, 1st Punjab Cavalry, however, was told by one zamindar
that " cattle do suffer from it, and they get it in consequence of eating dheela grass
" which grows upon inundated land, some part of which, either the root or some other
" part, contains a worm, or an insect of some kind, in June or July. The cattle eat
" it then and it gives them the seeds of the disease, which does not break out before
the cold season." I mention this to record that it was brought to my notice, and that
I made special inquiries about it among the natives, but not one of them to whom I
spoke had heard of it before.
24. Causes.—The causes may be divided into three classes—the proximate,
remote, and ultimate. A. Proximate cause.—It has been shown above that the disease
is one of the blood, and not of any organic structure of the body. That it is a
specific blood disease, has been proved by the experiments detailed in the appendices
I) to I. When the diseased blood is introduced beneath the skin of a healthy animal,
or into the stomach of a healthy animal, the blood of that animal becomes diseased
likewise, and the same series of general constitutional disturbances appear in him as
characterised the disease of the animal from whose vein the blood was taken. There
is, therefore, some virus in the blood, which, when it is transferred into a healthy
animal, is as sure of growth and propagation as if we introduced seeds into a garden,
or the roe of fish into a suitable stream: the like reproducing its like, and no other.
Let us now examine the diseased blood to find in what respect it differs from healthy
blood, so far as the microscope can reveal. In the early stage of the disease the
normal elements of the blood, the white and red corpuscles and serum, appear healthy
and in a normal proportion to each other, but there is a new element, abnormal and
not hitherto found in any other disease. It is a living and exceedingly active parasite.
There may be only one in the field of the microscope, or there may appear to be as
many as there are of corpuscles. They are exceedingly small, having a diameter of
about 1/8 or -1/10 that of a large white corpuscle, and with the motion of an eel. I shall
describe them more in detail presently, During the progress of the disease the
parasite does not remain always in the same proportion : it comes and goes in successive
broods. The general symptoms are also variable. I have not been able to prove that
a definite relation exists between the variable number of the parasites present and the
course of the symptoms, but I think it is probable.* However, by-and-by, besides
the presence of the parasite, the elements of the blood become abnormal: the first
change is an increase in the number of white corpuscles (Leukocytosis). Sometimes
1/3 or even 1/2 the number of corpuscles in the field will be white, and there is remarkable
increase in the number of the large granular white corpuscles. The next change
* Steel has since proved this relationship {vide his report on the disease in Burmah).