However, the typhic miasma absorbed at the same time by the respiratory and digestive mucous membranes serves to modify the qualities of the blood, and secretly reacts on the nervous system; soon after, the animal exhibits more decidedly those changes which previously were hardly to be detected; his want of appetite is more marked, his sadness more obvious, and his attention fixes itself more slowly and carelessly on the objects which surround him. When he is in the shed, his usual food is found in excess of his wants, his thirst is much keener and more frequent, and a continual dejection and lowness of spirits or a transitory agitation disturb all his functions. When the farmers or graziers notice these premonitory signs for the first time they pay but little attention thereto; but if the contagion has found its way into their stalls and sheds they are no longer deceived by them, but begin to apprehend that in a day or two fresh victims will be added to the number.
2. _Period of Initiation._--Soon the elaboration of the virulent miasma in the organic structure changes the quality of the blood and humours, the functions of assimilation and secretion are modified, the nervous centres receive vitiated organic elements and are disturbed in their physiological conditions, and the smitten animal displays that state of latent uneasiness which he is imperfectly conscious of by a general look of heaviness and stupor (Τυφος), which has suggested for this disease its name of typhus.
Indeed, the poor animal's eyes are fixed, the hearing becomes obtuse or indifferent, as may be seen in the sinking of the ears, those organs which are so sensitive, so contractile, and so vigilant in herbivorous animals. With the head hanging down and motionless, the neck stretched out, their forelegs open and spread, their buttocks drawn together and one of them completely lax, they seem to succumb beneath the weight of their bodies. In a word, the animal exhibits through its whole bearing a heavy sadness, a general dejection, which bespeak a great derangement in the whole structure. From this time, in the animals which are most seriously affected, the appetite ceases, the rumination becomes irregular and partial, whilst in some others the appetite and rumination are maintained in different degrees.