in the dewlaps to draw off the pestilential humour from the breast, and in other cases beasts are frequently rowelled in the flanks, – yet, in this operation, as matter is inserted by these channels into the neighbouring vessels, those vital parts, or the womb, might become the chief seat of the disease, and the event prove fatal.
"To prevent such accidents, human beings have been inoculated on the arms and legs, and now-a-days the arms are found sufficient. I would recommend that the cattle should be inoculated about the middle of the shoulders or buttocks, on both sides, to have the benefit of two drains. The skin is to be cut lengthways two inches, deep enough for the blood to start, but not to bleed much. In this incision is to be put a dossil or pledget of tow, dipped in the matter of a boil full ripe, opened in the back of a young calf recovering from the distemper. It may not be amiss to stitch up the wound, to keep the tow in, and let it remain forty-eight hours. Then the stitches are to be cut, the tow taken out, and the wound dressed with yellow basilicum ointment, or one made with turpentine and yolk of egg, spread on pledgets of tow. These dressings are to be continued during the whole illness, and till after the recovery of the beast, to promote the discharge; and then the wound may be healed with the cerate of lapis calaminaris, or any other.
"On the third day after inoculation, the discolouring of the wound, whose lips appear grey and swollen, will be a sign that the inoculation has succeeded; but the beasts, as Professor Swenke informs us, did not fall ill till the sixth day, which answers exactly to the observations daily made in the inoculating of children. Yet the Professor adds that on the third day a costiveness came on, which was removed by giving each calf three ounces of Epsom salts.
"No sooner do the symptoms of heaviness and stupidity appear than the beasts must have a light covering thrown over them, and at night fastened loosely. They must be rubbed morning and evening, and curried, till the boils begin to rise; warm hay-water and vinegar-whey must be given plentifully. Should the beasts require more nourishment, dry meat, such as cut hay, with a little bran, may be offered. I should be very cautious in giving milk-pottage, even after the boils and pimples had all come out, for fear of bringing on a scouring. However, this caution is proper, that whenever milk-pottage be given, the vinegar-whey is to be omitted for obvious reasons. In cases of accident, the same attention is to be observed in the disease by inoculation as in the natural way, and the medicines recommended are the same I would use; but by inoculation there seldom is a call for any, so favourably does the distemper proceed through its several stages.
"The crisis being over, it will be proper to purge the cattle, to air them by degrees, and to have the same regard in the management of them as is laid down in the chapter on the method of cure."
Such are the recommendations which Layard has prescribed for those who have to practise inoculation as a preventive treatment; it would be difficult to offer an example of greater prudence or precision.
A certain number of oxen were, by means of this inoculation, protected against the attack of the cattle disease; and this mode of treatment was, as we shall afterwards explain, adopted in Russia. Unfortunately, this rational and preventive treatment was discovered only at the end of the epizootia, when already upwards of six millions of horned cattle had fallen a sacrifice to the contagious fever.
Curative Means.– When the first course of the disease had left no doubt of the attack, the sick animal was subjected to an appropriate diet, and restricted to liquids either as medicinal decoctions, or as alimentary beverages. The decoctions consisted of whey mixed with a little vinegar, and nitred hay. The broths, or alimentary beverages, consisted of a decoction of bread, and of water mixed with bran and meal, whether of barley, oats, or wheat.
At this stage of the curative process, the majority of physicians recommended one or two bleedings, in order to abate the violence of the fever, and of the congestions near the nervous centres and the lungs; and as constipation prevailed at the time, they strove with the same object to empty the digestive passages, the intestines, and the stomachs, notwithstanding the difficulty that exists to produce this result in ruminating animals.
The purgatives employed consisted of a decoction of senna, mixed with prune juice, with a little rhubarb or fresh linseed oil, infused in their drink, or applied as a clyster in warm water slightly salted. Those who practised polypharmacy administered at night a mixture of nitre, camphor, red-lead, and rhubarb, in half a pailful of warm water; and greatly did they boast of the active influence of this beverage.
Some practitioners even endeavoured, in the first stage of the malady, to accelerate its action on the skin by giving for that purpose warm drinks, and by covering the cattle with woollen cloths, to promote perspiration; but it was generally admitted that the sick animals preferred cold drinks, and that they were particularly fond of acidulated whey.
In the second period of the distemper, the same drinks were continued, adding thereto some theriac or Jesuit's bark, in order to lessen the frequency of the diarrhœtic evacuations. They also provoked the depurating secretions from the mouth, nose, and eyes, by repeated washings; and as those animals, in which the running was most easy and copious, seemed to be less seriously affected with the disease, they strove to increase that which flowed from the glands of the mouth by fixing a gag in the jaws, and keeping it there for several hours. This measure seemed so efficacious that a decree from the Parlement de Rouen, issued on the 13th of March, 1745, ordered the application of a gag, or bit, for three hours every day, to the cattle under treatment.
In the third period, they sought to overcome the wasting of strength in the system by means of tonic and nutritious drinks, decoctions of centaury, Jesuit's bark, juniper berries, &c. They likewise administered emollient clysters if the evacuations were bloody.
Moreover, they placed two or three setons, principally in the dewlap, in order to obey the signs and indications of nature —quo natura vergit, eo ducendum; as a salutary and critical eruption of the skin was at that period forcing its way. These setons were kept open with a mixture of turpentine and yolks of egg, for the purpose of encouraging the secretion. The purulent or emphysematous tumours were cut.
But whatever means might be employed, almost all the cattle perished, and the few and rare recoveries only afforded the pessimists the satisfaction of claiming the merit of them for themselves. It was remarked, besides, that the fattest beasts were the least able to resist the effects of the distemper.
It is hardly necessary to say, that during the whole course of the treatment, great care was taken to keep both the stables and the cattle in a perfect state of cleanliness.
The convalescence of those animals which were cured was invariably long, and required great attention as to their food and hygienic treatment. Solid substances, roots, and forage were withheld until rumination revived; and it was only after several days of encouraging trials that the recovered animal was suffered at last to feed all day in the field, according to his pleasure.
Such, then, was that formidable epizootia which, in the middle of the eighteenth century, swept away upwards of six millions of horned cattle, and which occasioned a loss to Europe exceeding fifty millions sterling – perhaps we might say a hundred millions – for other domestic animals, sheep, horses, &c. (as generally happens in cases of epizootia), had likewise suffered, in different degrees, from the various complaints arising from inclement seasons.
It was certainly necessary to our purpose that we should have taken this retrospective view of the cattle disease, and it will afford us a valuable guide for the future. We may now content ourselves with bringing together the different annals in the chain of time which elapsed between Layard's treatise, which was published in 1757, and the present day. This chain of time amounts to 108 years.
The typhus of Horned Cattle, which had shown itself in a manner permanent, sometimes raging at one part of the globe, sometimes at another, could not, under the unaltered conditions by which it had been generated, suspend its ravages; and though, thanks to her isolated
