Mastitis and fraudulent cattle traders

In the nineteenth century mastitis was thought to be caused by, among others, swelling of the udder. The swelling itself needed an external cause for explanation, which was looked for in inadequate animal husbandry. Sloppy milkmaids and fraudulent cattle traders are frequently found in the literature throughout most of the century. Two examples of the latter are given here.

Auguste Jourdier [calls himself farmer at Vert-Galant, but is a veterinarian],

‘Foire a moutons de la Pomponne’, Journal d’Agriculture Pratique, de Jardinage et d’Economie Domestique, 7 (1852) 236-237

[Describes the prices at the market of horses, sheep and cattle]

“Milk cattle reached a price of 150-250 fr [per kilogram]. The sellers, mostly small farmers, have the deplorable habit of not milking the cows long before, in order to make the udder look much bigger. This is a serious mistake, because this barbarous actions may cause severe diseases: a more or less intense mastitis, an obstruction of milk [galactophores] canals, frequently resulting in loss by the beast of one or two teats. Sometimes it makes them ill-natured and difficult to milk, due to the suffering they have endured, and which has been excited by the noise of the crowd or the blows.”

Th.Kitt, [prosector and lecturer at the Veterinary Highschool of Munich]

‘Untersuchungen über die verschiedene Formen der Euterentzünding.’ Deutsche Zeitschrift für Thiermedicin 12 (1885) 7-8

[Describes the etiology of mastitis in relation to different pathological-anatomical changes]

“…  Frequently there are, in high- or moderate-producing milk cows, e.g. by a too late milking-out (which is often deliberately put into practice by traders, to demonstrate a fraudulent milk profit), conditions in which milk droplets adhere abundantly [to the teat] …”

It should be noted that Kitt was discussing the route of entrance of infectious agents.

I found at least four times in the literature remarks on the fraudulent behaviour of cattle traders or sellers of cows as contributing to cases of mastitis.

A cat in a pathology lab

A remarkable case of “anthroponosis”, published in the Journal of Comparative Pathology, 1, 60-62, 1888, translated from a French publication:

A CASE OF TRANSMISSION OF PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS FROM MAN TO THE CAT

Communicated to the Societé de Médécine Pratique, Decvember 1887.

By Drs FILLEAU and LÉON PETIT

Translated from the Journal de Médécine de Paris, Jan.1888

[………..]

  "We had in our laboratory a cat that evinced a very marked taste for phtisical sputum.  It followed the patients about, and as soon as they expectorated on the ground it greedily devoured the sputum. Gradually this taste became a passion; the cat watched with interest all the manipulations which were made in the laboratory in the microscopic exmination of sputa, knowing well that the refuse from the operation was destined for it.

  Submitted to this regime, the animal soon became emaciated, its coat stared, its eyes were bleared, it had a muco-purulent secretion from the nose, violent sneezing, and cough sometimes followed by vomition. It crawled with difficulty; in short, it presented all the symptoms of a very advanced stage of some chronic, grave disease.

  I need hardly say that we followed day by day the progress of this malady, and the more so because in the bacillary examination of the nasal discharge, which in reality came from the bronchi,  we had on several occasions proved the presence of Koch’s bacillus. We waited then, not without impatience, the natural termination of this pulmonary tuberculosis, in the expectation of an interesting autopsy.

  After about two months and a half we were much surprised to see the morbid symptoms rapidly abate. The violent cough became less frequent, the purulent discharge quickly disappeared, the general state improved considerably, the animal’s spirit returned, and it seemd on a fair way to recovery. It continued, nevertheless, to consume sputum with the same avidity. I confess that our first conviction at this time was considerably shaken.

  But the cat gradually gave evidence of pregnancy, and at the normal period gave birth to seven well-developed kittens. It suckled one of these for five months, and it did not present any symptom of cachexia; but a slight, dry, hacking cough nevertheless persisted. Six months after the act of parturition, on account of its contact with a mad dog, the cat was killed as a sanitary measure."

……………

Next followed the autopsy of the cat, confirming that it had contracted a real tuberculosis.

This publication shows some light on the state of good laboratory practice, of the role of companion animals in society and of sanitation in pathology laboratories in the last decades of the 19^th century.

Magic and Mastitis

The Swiss veterinarian Gattiker (1848) was the first to give a description of problems of mastitis in a scientific veterinary journal [1]. 

The disease was called “gelber Galt” because the milk that was produced by those cows is yellow (”gelb”) and the amount is considerably reduced (“Galt”). In his paper he discussed what he thought could be the causes of the disease but first  he described what he called an interesting case of superstition.

“ In approximately 8 subsequent years all the cows, four in total, of an owner in Schönenberg, in a high mountanous region, were affected by this disease [i.e.gelber Galt], forcing him each summer to sell a few of his most beautiful cows to the butcher, with rather great financial loss. Then this owner came to think that his cattle was bewitched. A fortune-teller […] advised him to go to a referee [Scharfrichter] in Schwyz to get help, because an old neighbour-woman might be the witch. The referee ordered the owner of the cows to pray in the stable, together with the fortune-teller and a certain N.N. […] at witching hour, at midnight, and to fasten a leather belt around the abdomen of the cows, and to proceed several nights with this ceremony. A veterinarian may have advised to go on with it until the old woman were prayed to death. By chance I came to this remarkable performance, made this otherwise sensibnle man reproaches about his superstition, told him that his cattle could be cured in an entirely natural way if he should make a change in the diet and also that his stables were in a poor condition.”

Gattiker described that he proposed a therapy of salts and herbs.

“ After a short time the milk secretion started again and the leather belts could be discarded.

Late in the autumn the old neighbour-woman died; the people believed she had been prayed to death.”

Gattiker went on to discuss other causes, such as cold; but he seriously doubted whether contagion might be the cause.

1. [-] Gattiker, ‘Beschreibung der Krankheit der Kühe, welche in einigen Gegenden der Schweiz unter dem Namen “gelber Galt”, auch Gelti, bekannt ist.’ Archiv fürTierheilkunde 10 (1848) 1-5.

The failing health of German vets

The edition of July 15, 1889 of the Receuils de Médécines Vétérinaires opens with  a reminder, by Edouard Nocard, secretary of the organizing comittee of the V^me Congrès International de Médécine Vétérinaire.

“We remind the readers of the Receuil that the international veterinary congress will have its meetings in the main building of the Societé de Géografie, 184 Boulevard Saint-Germain, from 2 to 8 september forthcoming.

…

Among the numerous veterinarians from abroad who have joined the congress no Germans are counted. The few German veterinarians that had made a registration directly in the beginning later declared themselves unable to come for reasons of health (sic) [italics in original text]. The real motive for this general absence most be looked for elsewhere. It seems that the catchword given to the whole of Germany has been not to participate in any international congress, scientific or otherwise, that will be held in Paris on the occurrence of the World Exhibition.

In relation to this follows here an example of the parlance that was used in the German veterinary journals:

 ‘We trust that our German colleagues refrain completely from participating in this congress; the actual circumstances, the place where it is held and the occasion to which it is connected are sufficient motives for allowing absence .. ‘ (Berliner Wochenschrift, april 1889).

Even if the German veterinarians do not participate in the congres, it is fortunately not the same with veterinarians from Switserland,  Belgium, England, Italy, Holland, Russia, Romania, etc.

…

The preceding congresses were brilliantly succesful; there is no need that, the systematic absence of the Germans notwithstanding, our congress will be inferior to these.”

It is clear that feelings of national pride prevailed over scientific interests. The actual circumstances in the German appeal cited by Nocard may have had to do with the commemoration of the French revolution and the rise of revanchist ideas in France in that year with regard to the outcome of Prussian-French war of 1870-71. In this sense it corresponds to the nationalistic sentiments in the controversy of the bacteriological schools of Koch and Pasteur.

The misery of mastitis in 1883

Nocard and Mollereau were the first to demonstrate that mastitis was caused by a microorganism, later to be named Streptocoocus agalactiae. However, they were also the first to describe the miserable situation of a farm that was chronically affected by the disease. This is also interesting, especially from the point of view of social and economic history of animal disease.

I follow their description here, originally written in French [1].

“The observation to be described here will give insight into this remarkable affection [i.e. chronic mastits], the route it follows in the affected stables and its great tenacity.

In the last month of december [1883] one of us was consulted by a cattle farmer, his client, concerning an illness that prevailed at his farm and that made a great part of the milk that was produced absolutely unfit for consumption. Six years ago the disease appeared at this farm in the form of an induration in one of the milk glands with a serious alteration of the milk that was secreted. A veterinarian who was then consulted believed he had to do with a chronic mastitis and advised embrocations of campher ointments; next the disease hit a great number of the cows of the same stable without the owner asking again for the veterinarian, so that at the moment he called for us the farmer had already wasted almost three hunderd francs of campher ointment. In fact, more than eighty cows were one after the other hit by the same affection despite the ointment and the prayers and all kinds of conjurations that the owner had tried to put to work.

After six years more than half of the cows that had been held in these stables had payed tribute to this formidable disease; three weeks or one month after their purchase an udder began to form knots (a hard knot developed in the gland). The milk that was produced maintained its aspect and external characteristics but only diminished immediately in quantity; next it coagulated faster until it could no longer be kept; it had to be dristibuted among hurried clients. In the end it became watery, gritty, with a yellowish colour, sometimes evil-smelling, only to be brought to the dung-hill. Mixing it with good milk was sufficient to make coagulate the whole of the milk almost immediately. From then on the affected gland had to be considered as lost and the yeld of the cow diminished with one quarter.

When two quarters were hit, it was necessary to bring the animal to the butcher, because the yield of the two healthy quarters did not compensate for the loss of the farmer. In addition, although the general health of the cow seemed not affected, it was more difficult to fatten up, resulting in a cow, bought for giving milk, that was not even good enough for the meat.

One may understand that the exploitation of the cattle farm, continuing under these conditions for six years, was far from giving the benefits that had been expected with good reason.  In addition, the farmer, running out of resources and courage, was on the point of leaving the profession, when he got the idea to consult us.“

And out came the bacteria as a cause of mastitis. And a therapy.

[1] [E.] Nocard en [H.] Mollereau, ‘Sur une mammite contagieuse des vaches laitières.’ Annales de l’Institut Pasteur 1 (1887) 109-126

Blue milk

In the first half of the nineteenth century milk was found to have all kinds of different colours, mainly, it was thought, because of the cows eating plants which stained the milk. In my last message of 11 september 2013 I cited the ideas of Vallot about the colour, and other alterations, of milk. This message of today is about blue milk.

Vallot stated that the cause of blue milk is unknown but suspected that the eating of hyacint plants could be involved. Alexander Numan (1780-1852), director and teacher of almost every subject to be taught at the the Dutch Veterinary School, thought more about it. In his lecture notebooks, preserved in the library of Utrecht University, he mentions a list of plants that may be the cause of blue milk; what those plants had in common is that they contained indigo-like compounds that may have an effect on milk, Numan lectured, when the digestion of the animal is incomplete and when those compounds are not “decomposed and equilized”. He wondered why it is that the colours are not transferred to the butter but stay dissolved in the whey[1].

Almost two decades later, in 1841, C.J.Fuchs published the results of a study in which he showed that the blue colour of milk could be attributed to a contagium of which Fuchs was of the opinion that it was an infusorium of the genus Vibrio, observed by him in the milk. As long as milk was normal no infusoria were observed. Fumigation with chlorine was not sufficient to fight the Vibrio: Fuchs prescribed treatment of utensils, udders and milker’s hands with boiling lime [2]. With regard to the hygienic measures for preventing mastitis, to be applied several decades later, I consider this an interesting prescription.

The discussion about blue milk was brought to a new phase by Friederich Mosler, professor of (human) internal medicine (and other disciplines) in Greifswald (Germany). Mosler published a paper[3] in 1868 about blue milk, because he was confronted with a family of which some of the members became ill with gastritis after having consumed milk with a blue colour. In his paper Mosler gives an overview of the many plants that may give the milk this colour (hyacints were not mentioned, but some of Numan’s plants were) and then starts to describe what really matters when people are drinking blue milk. The difference between milk stained blue by plants and blue milk as a cause of gastritis was that when the latter was left standing for several days it became covered with a thick blue skin. Mosler studied this layer with the microscope and found blue-stained fungi in it, which he compared to known fungi and of which he made some drawings which he included in his paper (see below).

So instead of resolving the problem of blue milk, Fuchs and Mosler added a new problem, that of contaminated milk. This latter became much more important, because of food safety and food hygiene. The problem of the milk becoming blue by plants silently disappeared from the academic interest.

  

Drawing by Mosler (1868) of fungi in blue milk.

A: partly stained fungus; B and C: stained casein particles; D: unstained butter droplets

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[1] A.Numan, Kort zamenstel der algemeene veertsenijkundige ziektekunde strekkende tot een leidraad der voorleezingen over dezelve (Short composition of general veterinary pathology meant as a guide to the lectures about it) HS 13 A 1 (1823), par. 124, p. 126.

[2] The original publication was abstracted by Wellenbergh from a paper in a German journal edited by Gult and Herwig of 1841: F.H.J.Wellenbergh, ‘Uitbreiding der Veertsenijkunde in de jaren 1841, 1842 en 1843.’ Numan’s Veeartsenijkundig Magazijn V, II (1846) 81-281.

[3] F.Mosler. Ueber blaue milch und durch deren Genuss herbeigeführte Erkrankungen beim Menschen. (On blue milk and the diseases of man caused by its consumption). Archiv für pathologische Anatomie, 1868, 43, 161-181.

Colourful milk

In the Receuil des Médécines Vétérinaires of 1826 a description was given of the alterations of milk, mainly of its colour and taste, by Vallot.[1] It is an overview of the then known pathological changes of milk, and most of them are supposed to be caused by plants eaten by the animals. The translation and editing/summarizing of the text is mine. The Latin plantnames given in brackets are those given by Vallot.

1. Red milk, known for a long time, but the cause of this colour is unknown; one only knows that it has given rise to ridiculous fables and lamentable superstitions. Some agriculturists, attributing it to a disease of the teat, which is more soft, may have mentioned it as a result only; it remains for more precise observers to decide.

2. Yellow milk is produced, it is said, by kingcup (Caltha palustris) eaten by the cow; but this cause is doubtful.

3. Blue milk: the real cause is unknown. According to some agriculturists it has to be attributed to the eating of hyacinth (Hyacinyhus comosus).

4. Green milk is simply blue milk.

5. Non-coagulating milk is produced by the intake of the husks of green peas and of mint.

6. Bitter milk is given by cows when they eat absinth (Artemisia absinthium), alpine milkweed (Sonchus alpinum), and leaves of the artichok (Cynara scolymus), and by goats who have eaten a large quantity of shoots of elder (Sambucus nigra) and foliage of potatoes (Solanum tuberosum).

7. Unappetizing milk is produced by cows in Upper Canada, fed with turnips, instead of [squach][2]; only mentioned here to remember.

8. Milk with the taste of dung. In the Northern countries, when cows eat seaweed, their milk may contract a taste of dung.

9. Garlic milk. This type of milk is well known; it is due to plants with a smell of garlic eaten by the cows, and the number of those plants is considerable.

10. Milk without taste and the butter of it with a colour of lead is given by cows eating horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile).

11. Sweetend milk from meadows in Les Landes is given by cows that graze on alpine clover (Trifolium alpinum).

12. Red butter. This colour is given to butter by the currant-juice of asparagus; but it is not yet known whether the samples taken from the butter, at our markets, that have this colour are constantly due to this cause.

Monsieur Vallot may have been a collector of agricultural data about milk. According to the subtitle of this paper he presented this list at a session of the Académie des Science in Dijon in 1825. The same subtitle also mentions that this list has been extracted from a medical bulletin. Like so many learned men in his days he may have been eager to present his collection  to the society of which he was a member.

The collection does not show a clear pattern, except that most but not all of the alterations are caused by plants. Some of them he only knows from reports of others (Canada), some causes are assumptions only like the yellow and the blue milk, and the first alteration, the red milk, is placed in the middle of an apparently ongoing controversy about the cause that may be a disease. What he does not mention is, that, even in his days, the red colour of the milk has been attributed also to blood in the milk because of an inflammation.

Nevertheless, Vallot stood in a tradition of classifying abberrations of milk as a separate class of pathology, subdivided in smaller groups, of which qualitative alterations, such as blue, souring, bitter, tough and watery milk were seen as caused by the eating of plants.

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[1] M[onsieur] Vallot. Du lait considéré dans ses alterations physiologiques. Receuils des Médécines Vétérinaires, 3, 1826, 171-173

[2] I was unable to find a translation for the name of this plant; some googling suggested that it should be read as squash and may be a pumpkin. Maybe readers (from Canada?) can help me.