Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia, a disease of cattle.

1898		E. Dyson ‘A Visit to Scrubby Gully’ in Below and On Top 🌐 I elicited that pleuro happened, and rabbits, and fires.
1898		H. Macilwaine Dinkinbar 65: May the pleuro kill every hoof of cattle on Dinkinbar.
1899–1900		H. Lawson ‘The Little World Left behind’ in Roderick (1972) 376: The neighbours’ sons [...] drawled drearily concerning [...] the drought and ‘smut’ and ‘rust’ in wheat, and the ‘ploorer’ (pleuro-pneumonia) in cattle.
1901		H. Lawson ‘The Ghosts of Many Christmases’ in Roderick (1972) 513: They brought news of four more cows down with ‘the pleuro’.
1901		Truth (Sydney) 15 Dec. 8/2: Cancer & tuberculoses, / Plooroe, and sum other things .
c.1905		J. Furphy Rigby’s Romance (1921) Ch. viii: 🌐 But the Lord He backed up Moses, an’ sent locusts, an’ pleuro, an’ Scotch greys, an’ all manner o’ curses on the country.
1917		‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘The Bullock’ in Three Elephant Power 42: Or Providence sends the pleuro, and big strong beasts slink away by themselves, and stand under trees glaring savagely till death comes.