CANINE BABESIOSIS (BILIARY FEVER)

According to Lounsbury (1902), a disease identified as biliary fever affected dogs in parts of South Africa for the greater part of the nineteenth century. The author suggested that the ailment of dogs described by Lady Anne Barnard (1779) was canine babesiosis. It was first encountered in 1885 at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, (Hutcheon, 1896). Spreull (1899) succeeded in transmitting the disease by innoculating healthy dogs with infected blood. Microscopical examinations of blood obtained from infected dogs revealed intra-corpuscular parasites resembling those of redwater and similar to the ones observed by Koch (1897) in the blood of East African dogs. However, all these have distinct morphological differences, (Robertson, 1901). Robertson (1901) confirmed the observations and stated that the intra-corpuscular organisms appeared on the fourth day following subcutaneous inoculation although blood of inoculated dogs was infective on the third day. Lounsbury (1901) demonstrated that canine biliary fever was transmitted by the dog tick (Haemaphysalis leachi). Theiler (1904, 1905) studied the disease in the Transvaal, South Africa and carried out a number of immunization tests as a result of which he showed that a recovered dog was premunized.