Investigation into the disease of sheep called 'scrapie' (Traberkrankheit: la tremblante) with especial reference to its association with sarcosporidiosis.

  • M'Gowan, J. P.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Investigation into the disease of sheep called 'scrapie' (Traberkrankheit: la tremblante) with especial reference to its association with sarcosporidiosis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    though known by various names ; and that continuing the same breed without introducing rams from other flocks (provincially—breeding in- and-in) will produce it. The reason, perhaps, why this complaint has been lately known as the Wiltshire disorder, is that most of the Wiltshire wethers are sold off when lambs, and are fattened before they are two years old, and the pushing them with high keep at so early an age will most assuredly discover the goggles if they be in the blood. [Cf. present-day view in Roxburghshire that high feeding brings out scrapie.] Many thousands that have been sold, not only from Wilts but also from Hants and Dorset, have been attacked with this disorder. The sellers have been obliged to stand by the loss, and the sort of sheep has been, in consequence, brought into discredit. It has been, however, for a long time on the decline, and if care be taken in selecting the rams it will probably soon wear out. [Italics mine.— J. P. M'G.] The points to be noted in this extract are, that although there is no reference to the symptom itching, there is a distinct reference to other characteristics of scrapie as one knows it now—viz., weakness in the hind legs, shakings, drooping of ears, possible heredity, lapse of two years before symptoms appear; non-recovery from the disease, high keep bringing out the disease, all sorts of sheep being subject to this dis- order, though known by various names, and inbreeding pro- ducing the disease; that the goggles is considered to be the same as the rickets and the shakings; and that the disease was prevalent in Lincolnshire in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in Wiltshire, Cambridgeshire, Hants, and Dorset at the end of the eighteenth century. The following extract from the ' General View of the Agriculture of the County of Cambridge,' published in 1811, p. 276, and quoted there from Vancouver's report of some years previous, shows independently the existence in the county of Cambridge of a disease with all the symptoms of scrapie. The disease is not mentioned by name, and so far as this author is concerned, does not appear to have one. He says:— At Ashley and Silverley are Norfolk sheep, amongst which a grow- ing disease prevails, equally alarming with the rot (though these sheep- walks are happily free from that calamity), the first appearance of which is indicated by the wool changing to a brown ^ colour, and as the disease advances it drops off at the roots and leaves the skin quite ^ Caused by their rubbing against earthy banks.—[J. P. M'Q.]