This Barrier, Then,
Seems To Explain The Absence Of The Horse Among The Hottentots,
Though It Is Not Opposed To The Southern Migration Of Cattle,
Sheep, And Goats.
When the flesh of animals that have died of this disease is eaten,
it causes a malignant carbuncle, which, when it appears over
any important organ, proves rapidly fatal.
It is more especially dangerous
over the pit of the stomach. The effects of the poison
have been experienced by missionaries who had eaten properly cooked food,
the flesh of sheep really but not visibly affected by the disease.
The virus in the flesh of the animal is destroyed neither by boiling
nor roasting. This fact, of which we have had innumerable examples,
shows the superiority of experiments on a large scale
to those of acute and able physiologists and chemists in the laboratory,
for a well known physician of Paris, after careful investigation,
considered that the virus in such cases was completely neutralized by boiling.
This disease attacks wild animals too. During our residence at Chonuan
great numbers of tolos, or koodoos, were attracted to the gardens
of the Bakwains, abandoned at the usual period of harvest because
there was no prospect of the corn (`Holcus sorghum') bearing that year.
The koodoo is remarkably fond of the green stalks of this kind of millet.
Free feeding produced that state of fatness favorable for
the development of this disease, and no fewer than twenty-five died
on the hill opposite our house. Great numbers of gnus and zebras perished
from the same cause, but the mortality produced no sensible diminution
in the numbers of the game, any more than the deaths of many of the Bakwains
who persisted, in spite of every remonstrance, in eating the dead meat,
caused any sensible decrease in the strength of the tribe.
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