Rinderpest is an acute infectious disease of cattle. As is described in literatures cattle are most predisposed to this disease but the severity of the attack varies somewhat with the species of them. Nicolle & Adil-Bey reported that the Russian steppecattle offer considerable resistance to rinderpest, but Rogers stated that Indian cattle raised in plain field are less susceptible than those in mountainous districts. Rogers & Kolle attribute the above fact to what is called an acquired immunity which has developed in the plain field species as a result of frequent prevalence to which they had been exposed.The writers are also acquainted with the fact that the Chinese cattle are highly resistant to natural infection of rinderpest. It seems highly probable that they possess acquired immunity as the disease is generally distributed throughout China. Japanese cattle have no strong resistance, so it has occasioned enormous losses due to the prevalence of this disease which was introduced by cattle imported from China or Siberia.Rinderpest is rare in sheep and goat which offer considerable resistance to its infection but sometimes an epidemic form of it is found among them. This fact has already been reported by Koch, Theiler & Pitchford, Kolle & Türner and others.In Japan, only one case of the disease occured among the sheep which were kept in the Animal Quarantrine Station at Yokohama.While pigs, camels, antilopes and buffaloes are highly resistant to this disease, some cases of natural infection among them have been reported.With respect to Rinderpest in deer, Hutyra and Marek have already stated in their book that they are also predisposed to it, but no precise description based upon experimental study has been lacking. The deer occupies an important position among animals in our country, for we find them not only growing wild in nearly all districts of this land but also being raised in a great number in shrines or public gardens.It needs, therefore, no display of argument that an experimental study on rinderpest in deer will have an important bearing upon the general problem regarding the prevention of the disease in this country.It is already confirmed by many investigators that the disease is due to an ultramicroscopic virus found in the blood, tissue fluid, etc. of an infected animal. The minimum lethal dose of the blood virus (0.002c.c.) determined by Koch and that (0.001c.c.) by Nitta & Sanui well agree with the results obtained by Kolle & Türner. Although the blood of an infected animal has thus been proved to contain the virus, studies as to changes in the blood are very scarce; Marcet has studied the chemical change of blood, while Oudemans has worked with analysis of blood and serum from infected cattle, Furstenburg & Beale, Gerlach and Réfik-Bey have made some microscopical investigations of blood.The writers employing three Japanese deer (Cervus sika) and three calves as controll animals have made some experiments regarding their resistance or susceptibility to rinderpest and moreover studied the changes in the blood taken from infected animals.The following is the brief description of the results of our investigations:(1) Deer are, like cattle, predisposed to rinderpest. The severity of the disease in them is almost alike to that in cattle. In all three deer which were used for the experiment, natural infection and an inoculation with the virus have resulted in the development of the disease.(2) Deer infected with rinderpest have shown symptoms which closely resemble those in cattle. In the case of natural infection, the period of incubation did not exceed 10 days and the animal died in the course of 5 days.
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