In anticipation of the disease reaching Switzerland, the first step taken
was to obtain, by means of special commissioners and otherwise, from the
countries where the disease prevailed, precise information as to its
character, the modes of treatment, and the results of such
treatment.
Scientific and practical men were then called to a conference with the
chief of the federal department of the interior, (Dr. Schenk,) the
department having cognizance of the subject, and to whom was submitted
all the information previously obtained by that department.
That information conclusively showed that “all attempts at cures
heretofore made in other countries had the great disadvantage that,
while they were being made, the speedy suppression of the disease, by
the extirpation of the contagion, had been neglected. England and
Holland have now been suffering for sixteen months from the consequences
of such mistake.”
1. That all attempts at cures would be worse than folly.
2. That it might be equally fatal to confine the agents appointed to act
in the premises to any prescribed rules of action, thereby involving the
possibility of delay for appeals to the department; and he therefore
determined:
3. To give them full authority to act as, in their judgment,
circumstances should demand, after expressing to them, orally, his
opinion that, should the plague develop itself in any one or more of a
drove or stable of cattle, the whole drove or stable should be forthwith
slaughtered and buried, and the premises thoroughly disinfected.
It was made incumbent upon all persons owning or having cattle in their
possession promptly to report to the nearest authorities upon the
appearance of any symptoms of disease whatever such cattle, or any of
them, might develop, that the character of the disease might be
determined, after immediate inspection, by a veterinary surgeon;
compensation to follow any loss occasioned by the execution of the
orders of the authorities. Any neglect, or even delay, in making such
report, involved not only a forfeiture of compensation, but rendered the
delinquent liable to fine and imprisonment.
Professor Zangger was appointed the agent to carry out the views of the
government, in case the pest appeared in Switzerland.
I transmit printed copy of Professor Zangger’s report, (with
translation,) by which it will be seen that the disease reached
Switzerland and first declared itself on the 20th September, and that
the last case is reported as occurring on the 13th October, with a total
loss of only seventy-four animals, of which thirty-four had the disease,
forty healthy having been slaughtered in consequence of association.
In a letter to the department, transmitting his report, Professor Zangger
says: “We therefore desisted from all attempts at cures, and employed
all our energy towards the extermination of the disease—that is, to the
slaughtering of the infected, or of the animals suspected to be
infected. We destroyed or buried all objects that had been soiled by
contamination with refuse from the diseased; and where this could not be
done, we proceeded to disinfection according to scientific principles.
Until the complete purification of a stable, a place, or region, all
intercourse was rigorously prohibited.”
Up to the date of this despatch there have been no other cases, and the
embargo to the egress of any cattle whatsoever from the infected
districts into the surrounding communes and cantons, which was
immediately decreed on the appearance of the plague, has, by order of
the federal council, been abolished.
[Translation.]
Report addressed to the federal department of
the interior, by Professor Zangger, commissary special, at the
appearance of the cattle plague, dated October 15,
1866.
Sir: I have the honor to present to you a
circumstantial report upon the state and the progress of the cattle
plague:
1. The disease, as is known, has been introduced by a drove of cattle
which, after having been purchase at the market of St. Marx, in
Vienna, had been transported by the Salzburg-Munich-Augsburg railway
to Schlachters, near Gindaw, and from thence driven to Bregenz. The
drove consisted of thirty-two head, twenty of which belonged to a
cattle dealer, Mr. Herrlemann, at Bregenz, and twelve to a butcher,
Mr. Heinzle, at Gäzis. In Vienna an agent had been charged with the
conveyance of the cattle to a public special stable and to procure a
certificate of health. The certificate comes from a veterinary
surgeon named Muller, deserving but little trust, and does not
present any official character. At Salzburg, according to the
statement of the owners, the drove should have been examined and
verified, but there is no mention of such proceeding on the
certificate of health, and Professor Schumacher, at Salzburg,
declares, in the official gazette of Augsburg, that the visitation
and verification of the said drove are not inscribed in the
registers. The twelve oxen belonging to Heinzle were placed in a
separate wagon, and the twenty oxen belonging to Herrlemann in two
other wagons. The first mentioned were destined for the
slaughter-houses of Gäzis and its neighborhood, and there is nothing
known of the cattle plague having been introduced by them. As to
Herrlemann’s twenty oxen they have introduced the disease at
Bregenz, Dornbirn, and Hohen-ems into the Vorarlberg, and from
thence into Switzerland.
At the examination to which Herrlemann has been submitted at Bregenz,
he declared he had sold eleven oxen destined for Switzerland. Now,
according to the information taken, it has been confirmed that up to
this day only three importations, of eight head of cattle, have
taken place. Four head have passed the Rhine at St. Margareth on the
6th of September, and were immediately sent to St. Gall, where the
butcher, Stadelmann, received them on the 7th of September in order
to conduct them to Ganggass. where they were slaughtered on the 8th,
10th, and 12th of September. Three head have passed the Rhine on the
11th of September at the same place; these animals having been
transported to Au. there passed the night from the 11th to the 12th
of September in the public stable of Mr. Zoller, at the vessel (Zum
Schiff) at An, from whence they were sent by railway to Coire the
12th of September There they remained from 10½ till 11 o’clock in
the stable Gur Glocke, where the butcher, Walser Son, brought them
and had them immediately conducted to his stable, near his
slaughter-house. One of them died on the 14th of September, and the
two remaining were immediately slaughtered. One ox, who could hardly
walk, has passed the Shine on the loth, having been transported by
railway to the market of St. Gall. He was there purchased by Jacob
Stadelmann, brother of the aforenamed, who slaughtered him somewhat
later at St. Fiden.
2. The central points of contagion have formed themselves at Au, at
Coire, and in the vicinity of St. Gall.
(a.) At Au, on the 22d or 23d of
September—then about ten days after the placing of Herrlemann’s oxen
in the stable of the inn-keeper, Zum Schiff—at a considerable
distance from the public stable, one cow fell sick. She was treated
by the veterinary surgeon, Zoller, and killed in the night of the
26th in the barn of the veterinarian. The inn-keeper, Zoller, had
one cow more, and having purchased another, he placed her at the
side of the latter—three cases. On the 2d of October they were both
killed as diseased. From the 3d to the 4th of October one sick ox,
and on the 5th one cow, were brought to the veterinarian Zoller, and
on the same day both were killed, together with a calf six weeks
old, and a goat which had been in the same stable—four cases.
On the 26th September the veterinarian Zoller Was called to the
stable of the inn Zum Schiff for the deliverance of a cow at I.
Mezler’s, at Kobel, commune of Berneck. The cow then in treatment by
Zoller had to be killed, and on the 11th October the only one cow
remaining to Mezler succumbed to the cattle plague.
On the eve of the day before a new case was signalized at Jean
Torgler’s, hunter at Hasli-Au, a case the connection of which with
the others remains to be confirmed.
Up to this day the losses sustained at Au and at Berneck amount to
about ten head, among them one goat.
(b.) At Coire, in the vicinity of the stable
of the butcher Walser, who kept the three oxen of Herrlemann, one
cow was attacked in the stable of the father of Walser, who himself
took care of the diseased animals of his son. She was killed on the
23d September.
The carrier Buol is the neighbor next to the stable of the son
Walser. On the 20th September an ox belonging to the former fell
sick, and was treated by the veterinarian as afflicted with
“catarrhe gastrointestinal,” and killed on the 23d. Already in the
evening of she same day an ox fell sick. After having examined and
dissected him I declared him to have been afflicted with the cattle
plague.
On the 26th September the ox belonging to the knacker Salvator,
employed on the 14th
[Page 188]
and
15th for transporting to the flaying ground the ox which had died at
Mr. Walser’s, fell sick in the last sadium of the disease and was
killed.
On the 27th September the following stables have been voided :
Walser, son, stable No. 1—two sound animals and one diseased.
The same stable, No. 2—one diseased animal.
Walser, father—two sound animals and six diseased.
Buol, carrier—five sound animals.
Felix Vanescheu, who had put to the vehicle (on the 24th) the
diseased ox of Buol—one sound animal.
Total killed—ten sound animals and eight diseased.
On the 24th September a woman Baur went with seven cows, one calf and
one sheep from Coire to the pasture-ground of Campodels, and met on
the way the then probably diseased ox of the knacker.
On the 2d October the cow was taken ill. She was killed.
On the 3d October the remaining cattle were killed.
The contagion has thus caused to be killed at Coire five diseased
heifers before the plague was ascertained; eleven ditto after the
plague was ascertained—total, sixteen.
There were also killed seventeen sound head of cattle and one
sheep.
Total killed—thirty-four animals.
It is to be hoped that the losses at Coire will be confined to this
amount. At noon to-day the visitation of all the cattle begins. If
the result is favorable we shall maintain the ban for three weeks
longer, and if, during that interval, no new case appears, and
another inspection shows that all the cattle are sound, the
extraordinary measures may be removed.
In the Canton of St. Gall, at Gurkasenmühle, commune of Talbat, there
were on the 29th September one cow and two heifers, the former
belonging to the miller Egger, the two latter to a butcher, Wild, at
St. Gall. These three animals were taken ill of the plague. One of
the heifers died in the morning of the 30th September. All these
three were put out of the way.
All that is known of the introduction of the contagion into this
stable is that the butchers F. and I. Stadelmann have, until the
27th of September, kept there the oxen which they had purchased on
the 24th August from the said Herrlemann. Now admitting that these
animals, which were not among the infected drove, have not brought
the contagion, it is a fact that Stadelmann has frequently and
directly gone to the cattle kept in the mill after he had left the
oxen diseased with the plague.
On the 3d October a certain Zweifel, farmer at Notkersegg, near St.
Gall, had one cow taken ill. She was immediately isolated from the
other five animals of the stable, killed on the 6th October, and the
post mortem examination confirmed the
diagnostic of the cattle plague.
On the 9th October two animals of the same stable were taken ill. On
the 9th and 10th all five were buried.
Zweifel possesses in the same barn another stable with fifteen cows.
On the 10th one cow was taken ill, and on the night of 11th to the
12th October she was buried by order of the authorities, together
with the fourteen sound cows. In the vicinity Zweifel possesses
another stable, safe up to this day, containing ten heifers.
Quite near the farm of Zweifel there is an estate called Zum Bogen,
belonging to the Monastery of Notkersegg, with five head of cattle
in one stable. On the 7th October a heifer was taken ill and died in
the night of the 8th to the 9th. It was diseased with the plague.
After that two other animals were taken ill, and on the 13th October
the stable was voided.
The monastery possesses in the vicinity another stable with nine
heifers.
The loss sustained in the vicinity of St. Gall amounts, therefore, to
ten diseased heifers and twenty sound ones. Of the former two have
died. Total loss near St. Gall, thirty head.
The contagion seems to have been brought to Notkersegg by the first
ill cow of Zweifel, which had been driven five or six days before
(28th or 29th September) to the town of St. Gall, and had remained a
certain time on the public highway. It has not yet been ascertained
with certainty as to where she had been infected.
The total loss, in consequence of the cattle plague, up to this day,
is the following :
(a.) At Au and Berneck, ten animals, of which
eight are diseased.
(b.) At Coire, thirty-four animals, of which
sixteen are diseased.
(c.) At St. Gall, thirty.
Total, seventy-four animals, of which thirty-four are diseased.
(All horned cattle except one sheep and one goat.)
