The Cat: A Neglected Factor in Sanitary Science

Abstract

The attention of the writer was drawn to this subject in the fall of 1904. The material for the paper was gathered the following winter. A request for facts bearing on the subject was inserted in the Journal of the American Medical Association early in August, 1905. This request has received so few answers that it seems advisable to gather and correlate the material available with present bacteriological views, and discuss briefly the possibility of the cat being a disseminator of disease. The paper is written solely from the standpoint of medical biology. The problems involved in the prevention of disease are predominantly biological in nature. Many diseases are already known to be due to specific organisms, and their distribution, course, and termination as well as methods of prevention depend fundamentally on biological laws. Everywhere science demonstrates that all forms of animal life, living with man, may become infeded with human disease organisms, and may transmit these organisms to each other and to man. In the process they mayor may not contract the disease themselves; and mayor may not increase or decrease the virulence of the disease organisms in their passage through the animal host. The problem as formulated by Dr. Theobald Smith (20), is thus stated, "How far does nature utilize animals as a workshop for preparing bacteria to act in a pathogenic rl)le upon the human race?" He concludes: "There is evidently some physiological relation between man and the rat, as disclosed by the bubonic plague; between man and the horse, as disclosed by the bacillus of glanders.. "Some writers believe in a relationship between man and certain domestic animals, as in case of scarlatina. More general relationships are established between larger groups of animals by anthrax and rabies. "If we go a step farther into a less cultivated domain, we can readily tkink of other possible relationships between human disease and animals in which the causes of human disease may live without producing any recognizable disease. We can neither dispute nor affirm such relationship because we know comparatively little, if anything, ofthe pathogenic organisms which thrive, say, upon the mucous membranes ofhorses, cats, dogs, rats, mice, and