Page 53 - VHSA - Onderstepoort 100 Years - Part 3

time it occurred in South Africa predominantly in what is known as the strandveld (‘beach veld’) i.e. the southern and western coastal areas of the Western Cape Province. It was said that small game, such as bontebok, steenbok and duikers, in the strandveld also suffered
from it, the bontebok in the Bontebok Reserve near Bredasdorp being particularly affected. This disease was responsible for the eventual translocation of the bontebok from this reserve to what is now the Bontebok National Park near Swellendam in the Western Cape Province. It is interesting to note that the diagnosis of swayback was confirmed in 1996 in blesbok and black wildebeest in what is now the Camdeboo National Park near Graaff Reinet in the Eastern Cape Province by M.L. (Mary-Lou) Penrith of the Pathology Section, R.C. (Roy) Tustin of the Pathology Department, Facul- ty of Veterinary Science and others.
Schulz and J.A. Thorburn described
the first recorded case of globidiosis (bes-
noitiosis) in a horse in South Africa in 1955,
and Schulz subsequently enlarged on our
knowledge of the condition in cattle which
had first been confirmed in South Africa in the Rustenburg district, North West Province in 1941.
ONDERSTEPOORT 100
calves but also the thyroid glands of some of them. The latter were carefully preserved in formalin and, after extraneous connective tissue had been removed, weighed. The work, however, was only written up and published in 1983 which
was after his retirement.
In 1945 J.D. (Daan) Smit, who had
commenced his veterinary career as a field state veterinarian in 1942, joined the staff of the Toxicology Section at the Institute. He decided, however, that his interests lay more in the direction of pathology and he joined that Section in 1949. His interest in toxicology was nevertheless retained and important contributions that he made in that field concerned gousiekte poisoning in ruminants, particularly in the confirmation of its diagnosis which is done by histopathology of the myocardium. At the time only one member of the family Rubiaceae was implicated as the cause of gousiekte in ruminants, i.e. Pachystigma pygmaeum (see Part 3: Toxicology). Smit was also a member of the team who reported in 1972 that another plant, Fadogia homblei, also causes the disease. Since then other
members of the Rubiaceae have been shown to be impli- cated. Gousiekte is an unusual plant poisoning in that there is a relatively long latent period between the time the animal eats the plant and its subsequent death some weeks later. Prozesky of the Department of Pathology and others in 2005 investigated the effect of the duration of latency on the nature of the myocardial lesions.
Turning sickness or cerebral theileriosis, a disease of cattle in East Africa, characterized by the accumulation of lympho- blasts parasitized by Theileria taurotragi or T. parva in meningeal vessels leading to thrombosis and infarction of parts of the brain, was first recorded in
South Africa by H.O. Flanagan and J.M.W.
le Roux, the latter being a pathologist at the
Institute, in 1956. A year later Schulz and
J.R. Schutte described the symptomatology
and pathology of a number of cases in the
Rustenburg district, North West Province.
Tustin subsequently encountered a case in
which the spinal cord was also the seat
of the lesion, and I.B.J. van Rensburg, a
pathologist at the Faculty described in
1976 five cases in which infarcts were pre-
sent in the spleen, a hitherto unrecorded
phenomenon. In 1959 le Roux described
the histopathology of Wesselsbron disease
in sheep, a relatively newly recognized
mosquito-borne viral disease in South Africa
causing high mortalities in new-born lambs
and kids.
While he was still in the Section Schulz
became interested in unravelling the gene-
tics of an inherited form of hypothyroidism in ‘grey’ Afrikaner calves which occurred in certain purebred herds. Over the years he collected not only the breeding records of affected
Before the advent of the immuno- 143 fluorescent antibody test, or other more sophisticated tests, for the diagnosis of
rabies (an always fatal disease of animals
and humans) the standard method was the histopathological examination, by the Pathology Section, of stained brain sections of the animal concerned for the presence of Negri bodies in brain cells coupled with a biological test in mice which was carried out by the Virology Section. The brains of the mice dying in the latter test were also subjected to histopathological examina- tion for confirmation of the diagnosis. This was a very laborious and time-consuming process and, particularly if there was a human contact (e.g. a dog bite) involved and the initial histopathological examina- tion was negative, a rather nerve-racking period for the person concerned.
At the time it was thought that the chances of demon- strating Negri bodies was greater in animals actually dying from rabies than it was in animals killed while possibly
“Schulz and J.A.Thorburn described the first recorded case of globidiosis (besnoitiosis) in a horse in South Africa in 1955, and Schulz subsequently enlarged on our knowledge of the condition in cattle which had first been confirmed in South Africa in the Rustenburg district, North West Province in 1941.”
Pathology
1908-2008
Years