lower belly, which in that case depends on a putrid fermentation so as to disengage air."
A piece of iron, representing the sign of the Cross, was heated in the fire, and when red-hot was applied to the forehead of the sick animals; and this remedy was looked upon at that time as the most effectual they could apply.
Grégoire de Tours makes mention of an epidemic, the result of a long dry summer, which, in 592, was very fatal in its havoc, sparing no living creature whatever.
André Duchesne, in his "History of England," speaks of an epidemic which, in 1316, during the reign of Edward II., owed its origin, on the contrary, to a long season of rains.
The celebrated physicians Ramazzini and Lancisi relate that in 1711, an ox which had been imported from Hungary, that constant focus of typhus, displayed the most deadly form of the cattle disease, in the Venetian territory, although no alteration in the air or waters had been observed in Italy, and the seasons had been regular and the pastures abundant. The contagion spread into Piedmont, where it carried of 70,000 head of cattle; thence it extended to France and Holland, each of which countries lost 200,000 of these animals. The trade in hides introduced the distemper into England, where it proved no less fatal. It was the same in the other countries of Europe.
In this disease, the intestines of the affected cattle were, as in the present epizootia, inflamed, and strewed over with livid spots and ulcerations, and the blood, though apparently fluid in the body of the animal, coagulated directly after it had issued from the vein.
Herment thence concludes, that this epizootia is nothing more than an inflammation of the blood. Lancisi advised his contemporaries to put to death without pity every animal which was affected or seemed to be affected with the disease; and it was in England that this spirited resolve was first acted upon.
The three counties of Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey arrested the course of this contagion in less than three months, by adopting this measure; whilst in the rest of the stricken counties of Great Britain, and likewise in Holland, where this decisive course was not taken at all, the disease prevailed among the cattle for several years. Since that time, it has been insisted on by some authors, that the barbarous process of general extermination offers the most effectual remedy which, in our present state of ignorance and improvidence, we could have recourse to, in order to check the diffusion and the duration of this fell disease.
The learned Goelicke describes an epizootia which was witnessed in 1730, at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. His narrative, written with a masterly hand, might very properly be applied to the disease which we are now considering; and the treatment recommended by this earnest and vigilant observer is so wisely deduced from the symptoms, that even in the present day we might take that treatment as a model.
We could have borrowed much more largely from this source of biographical researches had we not deemed that these quotations would be sufficient for the purpose we had in view in this work. But from these authorities we think it may justly be concluded, that infectious and contagious diseases among horned cattle have frequently appeared from the remotest times down to the middle of the eighteenth century.
All these attacks of epizootia were a frequent and severe cause of suffering and misery among animals and men; but the ravages which they left behind them were of slight importance each time, if we compare them with those attending the epizootia which towards the year 1746 affected the animal kingdom. This dreadful scourge lasted ten years, and swept away nearly the whole race of horned cattle throughout Europe. It was closely studied and thoroughly understood in its causes, its symptoms, and its treatment by the scientific authors of that day, and those writers, more judicious than we, did not designate the malady by the title of Plague. This particular visitation deserves to fix our attention in an especial manner, not only on account of its striking resemblance to the disease which now makes us all so anxious, but because it induced two English physicians, Malcolm Flemming and Peter Layard, to write on this disease two accounts or statements which are equal, if not superior, to all the volumes which have since appeared on the subject of the Cattle Disease. There is no help for it, and our pride must bend itself to the acknowledgment: these two men, our seniors by a century, were men of quite another stamp. Their expositions, enriched with quotations from the Greek and Latin authors, abounding in facts, ingenious insights and inferences, are far superior in merit to the multitude of voluminous works which have been written and published since then. It would be easy to prove that these two sagacious inquirers far better understood than we have done the real nature of this cattle disease, and that we must be grateful to them for first opening the way which all of us must take in order to discover the preventive and curative means of which we are still ignorant.
Let us observe, in passing, that these two physicians, who appear to have been scarcely known, enlightened by the effects of the inoculation of small-pox, then practised from man to man, appear to have first conceived the idea, now practised in Russia, of preventing the propagation of the contagious cattle disease by means of inoculation; and we may raise the interest of this remark by reminding the reader that their experiments to inoculate cattle were made in 1757, eight years after the very year which gave birth to the future inoculation of man with animal virus by the celebrated Jenner. By this it would appear that the twofold honour of applying the method of inoculation as both preventive and curative means in respect of contagion in cattle, and as the preventive means by the variola of the cow to resist the ravages of the small-pox in man, is the indisputable claim of English physicians.1
Very little is known of the origin or first outbreak of the epizootia which produced such fearful ravages in the middle of the eighteenth century. Some suppose that it first appeared in Tartary, where it occasioned a disorder twice as extensive in its pernicious effects as any similar distemper which had been known up to that time. Thence it passed into Russia, from which it spread on one side into Poland, Livonia, Prussia, Pomerania, and Holland, and from that country into England; on the other side towards the East, it invaded the Turkish Empire, Bohemia, Hungary, Dalmatia, Austria, Moravia, Styria, the Gulf of Venice, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the banks of the Rhine, and Denmark.
But another opinion has assigned Bohemia as the source from which this destructive epizootia took its rise, and its supporters allege that during the siege of Prague the cattle feeding in its plains had been deprived of their usual fodder by the continual razzias of the French to supply their own cavalry.
Be this as it may, this virulent cattle disease having at length assumed the proportions of a public calamity, the several governments were obliged to take it into serious consideration, and the medical faculties and most celebrated physicians began to make it the subject of their studies and reports. In France, therefore, the professors of the faculty of Paris and Montpellier, suspending every other pursuit, devoted their most assiduous care and attention to dumb animals.
Sauvages, the Dean of the Faculty at Montpellier, drew up a most philosophical and learned account of the prevailing disease, in which, like Stahl, he forgot probably for a moment the part which, in the progress of distempers, he ascribes to the soul.
The professors of Paris, very famous in their day, but who, having left behind them no works so valuable as the "Nosologia" of Sauvages, are now completely forgotten, likewise addressed the result of their inquiries and lucubrations to the King.
Doctor Leclerc was sent into Holland, whence he brought back a Memorial, which was a reflex of the opinions he found current in Denmark, and which has been transmitted to us in the Memorials of the Royal Society of Science at Copenhagen.
It is evident from the reflections found in the writings of Malcolm Flemming, Layard, and other competent observers, that this formidable epizootia was in its character identical with the one described by Ramazzini and Lancisi in 1711; and we feel warranted in saying, after having examined every work of any importance which has treated of that visitation, that it resembles the disease now prevailing among cattle,
To assist the researches of other inquirers on this vital subject, now so generally interesting, we may add, that the cattle treatises already referred to – of Malcolm Flemming and Peter Layard – are to be found in the Library of the British Museum, bound together in a single volume, which is certainly worth ten times its weight in gold. It contains, indeed, eight different opuscula, all relating to cattle complaints, which scientific students may consult with real gratification. I will here transcribe the titles of the most important of these treatises, the pregnant expositions of the two English physicians above-named.
That of Malcolm Flemming:
"A Proposal, in order to Diminish the Progress of the Distemper among the Horned Cattle, supported by Facts. London, 1755."
That of Peter Layard:
"An Essay on the Nature, Cause, and Cure of the Contagious Distemper among the Horned Cattle in these Kingdoms. London, 1757."
A great many accounts, treatises, and expositions on the same subject appeared at the same time in France, Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland. One, which appeared in the last of these countries, is entitled:
"Reflexions sur la Maladie du Gros Bétail, par la Société des Médecius de Genève. 1756."
