Читать книгу On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, description, and treatment - Bourguignon Honoré - Страница 4

The History of the Contagious Typhus of the Ox, from the remotest times down to the present day.

I

General, local, and particular causes of destruction are constantly reacting on organized creatures, and these causes account for those epiphytic diseases which infest plants, the epizootic diseases which spread mortality among the brute creation, and the epidemic, which strike and are fatal to the human species. Thus it is that we particularize at present, in the vegetable kingdom, the disease which has attacked the vines, olive-trees, and potatoes; in the animal kingdom, the silkworm sickness, and the cholera, and the typhoid fever of cattle: so that we may safely say, that one or other of these diseases is always, at a given moment, raging in some part of the globe among some species of animal, either birds, pigs, horses, sheep, horned cattle, or, in fine, attacks man himself.

When, however, the peccant invasion falls only on the vegetables and animals situated at our antipodes, we seldom hear of the ravages it commits; and when we do, forgetful of the affinity which links together all the organic beings on the earth and their mutual dependence, nothing can exceed the indifference we show to these calamities. Then, when the danger threatens us nearer home, or when the evil has invaded us, we have recourse to quarantine as the grand preservative to shield us. But this preservative remedy is most frequently deceptive – a mere illusion; for the real plague, typhus and cholera, borne along by the winds of heaven, pass over the longest distances and the highest obstacles, and baffle all our calculations; teaching us, by their successive returns, that we shall continually be exposed to their destructive havoc so long as we neglect to eradicate the evil at its original source, that is, in those countries from which it emanates.

And this is the place to observe, that the cholera morbus threatens to keep a permanent footing in the English possessions of India, because the public works, by means of which the great rivers used to be confined to their beds, have not of late been repaired and kept in good order in those countries; owing to which neglect, their waters overflow the plains, leaving, when they subside, those pestilential deposits which afford a perpetual incubation to the cholera.

We are induced to dwell thus on the general causes of these diseases, because the sick plants, on which dumb animals feed, and the sick animals, on which man himself feeds, have a continual relation of cause and effect; and we shall have to refer to this subject and give it weight, when we come to speak of the treatment of these diseases.

It is an important fact, which deserves our most pointed attention and consideration, that the vital resistance inherent in the animal frame to withstand the attacks of these contagious diseases, is very far from being the same throughout the whole kind. Man, in this respect, is the most favoured and best fortified; he is able, without much degenerating, to inhabit any latitude, to go with a sort of impunity, if his calling require him to do so, amidst the most pestilential emanations, and to continue for hours inhaling their baneful fumes. We could quote many striking examples of this resisting power in man. But there is one which we have recently witnessed, and which all can appreciate. We refer to the slaughter-house of the great Metropolitan Market. Here we saw, in lumps and fragments, every variety of corrupt detritus of animals which had been seized with the contagious typhus; we saw the animals, too, being felled and slaughtered and dissected, in a high temperature which rendered the air so poisonous that we could hardly breathe it; yet amidst all this infection the workmen employed to move and handle these revolting wrecks appeared indifferent to the scene, and quite in their usual health. No living animal besides man could stand such a trial; no other could breathe for hours, and day after day, like these workmen, an atmosphere so charged with decomposing impurities.

We say, therefore, that man may expose himself, with less danger to his life than any other animal, to those pernicious causes which produce and develop contagious diseases. Next to him, with respect to this power of vital resistance, come the omnivorous animals, then the carnivorous, and last of all, the herbivorous, in which this faculty is very feeble indeed.

This prime consideration, to be fully understood and appreciated by unscientific readers, would require explanations beyond the scope of this work. Let us, however, for the present establish the fact, that herbivorous animals, such as sheep and horned cattle, offer but a very weak resistance to the causes which generate infectious and epizootic diseases, and let us do our best to prove it by demonstration; for if this truth be once admitted, we shall therefrom deduce that it is the duty of man constantly to surround these frail and delicate creatures with special care and attention, if he wishes to prevent their being decimated from time to time, and if he would likewise avoid the consequent injuries to himself – the loss of health and money accruing from this deterioration.

So long as the herbivorous or grass-eating animal is properly fed; so long as he browses on fat pastures; so long as his blood retains those physiological elements which are the prime condition of health, he can, and does, resist the causes of most contagious maladies. But if a hot summer and a long continuance of dry weather chance to curtail, in temperate zones, the usual abundance of his fodder, then comes the fatal change: the blood is impoverished, the secretions are debilitated, a strange languor runs through the system, the vital resistance is unnerved, and he becomes an easy prey to those noxious influences which were encountered before without injury whilst his provision was abundant.

This is a fundamental matter. We therefore beg leave to support and justify our argument by borrowing some additional evidence from prior labours of ours, accomplished at the Ecole d'Alfort, near Paris, conjointly with Professor Delafond, whose name has so often been cited in the public journals in connexion with the cattle plague.

All vegetables and animals; with the exception of adult men, whenever their health declines from any cause (but more particularly from paucity of food), spontaneously generate microscopic parasites, or very minute insects, the germs of which are inherent in their system. A flock of fleecy animals, wasted by deficient food in dry and parched meadows, becomes attacked in due time by a parasitical cutaneous disease, known as the itch, which is enough, if not checked, to destroy the whole. Now, all that is required is to remove this flock to a more fertile soil, where there is plenty to feed them, and the disease will disappear of itself without any treatment. Deficiency of food destroys the health of animals, and abundance of food overcomes disease in them.

A sheep affected by this parasitical disease may, without any fear, be placed in a flock of healthy sheep, for he will not propagate the distemper; but if instead of being sound and healthy, the flock is in a weak declining state, this contaminated animal will diffuse the disease with frightful rapidity, and may cause their entire destruction. These facts may seem startling, but we are only speaking after the incontestable authority of experiments.

We selected six healthy sheep, which we kept well supplied with provisions; we covered these healthy sheep with parasites (acari). On every one of these sound, well-fed sheep, the microscopic animalculæ died off without generating the cutaneous disease; for the blood, the humours, and the skin of sound and healthy sheep constitute a soil unfavourable to the propagation of these parasites, and actually starve them to death.

After this first experiment, we subjected these six sheep to a deficient diet; they grew lean, their blood was impoverished, and then all we had to do was to lay upon them not thousands and thousands of these parasites – as we had done in the first instance – but one solitary female in a state of fecundity; and the parasitical distemper unfolded itself so fiercely as to cause the death of three of these sheep on which the test was allowed to run its course; whilst the other three sheep, having been restored in time to a recoverable condition just as they were about to drop off, were thoroughly cured, without any special treatment, by the sole influence of good food and ordinary hygienic attention.

Other tests, similar to these experiments, were applied to dogs, horses, and horned cattle. A lean and scraggy dog, covered with parasites and eruptions, with eyes running foul humour, a dog which could neither run nor stand, and which was reduced to the last stage of wasting marasmus, was rescued from the jaws of death and thoroughly cured without special treatment, by the sole influence of a rich restorative diet. This dog afterwards became a fine hunting hound, beautiful in shape, and admirable for his sportive attributes.

These experiments having been submitted to the judgment of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, were honoured with its approval, and the reports concerning them were printed at the Academy's expense, and crowned at the competitive examination.

The vital resistance of horned cattle is so feeble, that those animals which are periodically exhibited in the north of London, though certainly chosen from among the most healthy and robust, could not herd together in large numbers for the space of a month in the Agricultural Hall at Islington, without sinking under infectious and contagious diseases – almost one and all. Under the conditions in which we see them in that Show, a single month would be sufficient to produce almost their complete destruction; for even a single week, which is the usual duration of their confinement, affects them so much as to render a large proportion of them unhealthy.

Every one knows how apt cavalry horses are to sicken and die off during a campaign. Every one has heard of the fearful ravages amongst the horses of the Allied armies during the Crimean war, when many companies were dismounted owing to this mortality.

Let us now transport ourselves in thought into the middle of those immense steppes where vast and innumerable herds of herbivorous animals are being bred for our supply, and consider what will be the effects on their health and life if they should be afflicted with a scarcity of forage, in consequence of this long dry summer.

It is unnecessary to say that there exist in Russia, in Hungary, in Australia, in North and South America, and in many other parts of the globe, large tracts of country which are still uninhabited, whose uncultivated soil supplies with food great numbers of sheep and cattle. These spacious tracts, known as moorlands or steppes, particularly abound in Russia, on the banks of the Wolga, the Don, the Dnieper; in Hungary, on the banks of the Danube; and also in South America, in the republics of Venezuela, New Granada, Columbia, &c.

Now, in hot and rainy seasons these steppes teem with rich and luxuriant verdure; the plants growing up in the marshes are prolific and abundant, and even those parts of the wild moors which produce nothing but heath are capable of feeding and fattening flocks and herds.

Under conditions so auspicious as these, animals may still suffer, but in what way? By excess of food, or repletion. They are in general robust and healthy, and thus fortified they inhale without detriment the deleterious gases of oxygen with carbon, carburetted hydrogen and the like, exhaled by the plants which grow out of the swampy soils. Thus protected, too, they are proof against the fluctuations of the seasons, and against every injury which threatens them; and their strong and sound condition enables them to sustain the fatigues of their long and arduous journeys, and to supply the rich countries of the West with their flesh, fleece, and hides.

When the seasons have thus conveyed a due proportion of heat, water, and electricity to the elements of the soil, both plants and animals conduce to the comfort and health of man, and fulfil his expectations. But the laws of nature are involved in mystery. Good and evil go hand in hand – death and life travel close together – and a few years of prosperous harvests are almost invariably followed by blight, barrenness, and scarcity. Most men think only of the present time, and this imprudence and want of foresight prevent farmers and great cattle proprietors from collecting and holding in reserve the requisite stores of sustenance to supply their sheep and oxen during these barren seasons. Sickness then breaks out, and these helpless creatures perish in vast numbers, to the detriment of their owners' best interests.

And truly, when continual rains cause the rivers to overflow, when the plains are drenched and soaked, or when a burning sun scorches the ground, herbivorous animals wander in vain from field to field in quest of sustenance to restore their strength, or of pure and healthy water to slake their thirst; their vital resistance dwindles away, deleterious gases poison and bewilder them, their blood is debased, and as Ovid says,

"Corpora fœda jacent, vitiantur odoribus herbæ."

And since these mild and harmless animals, which seem to have been created merely to clothe us, and to nourish us with their milk and flesh, have not been endowed by nature either with the intelligence, or the activity, or the cunning, or the invention, or the skill bestowed on the omnivorous and carnivorous species, hard is their fate under the pressing needs of hunger. Peaceful creatures, they browse in vain on deleterious plants on a sterile soil; their external and internal teguments now afford a favourable seat for the propagation of parasites – for the parasitogenia; and soon after a general adynamia, or relaxation of the fibres, delivers them up without resistance to the morbific elements of the infectious diseases to which they are exposed, where the languishing, the sick, and the rotting are herded together, and they are carried off by hecatombs by this wasteful and devouring typhus.

II

We may readily conclude, from these general observations on infectious and contagious diseases, that they must have existed in all former ages; and if in our present advanced state of civilization they are so destructive, we may be sure that in those remote periods they must have been, both as regards man as well as the brute creation, the cause of general extermination, in whatever parts of the earth they prevailed. And indeed, whenever we refer to ancient or modern history, we are continually struck with the analogy which exists between the epidemic diseases signalized by the general name of Plague, and which decimated all the living beings, and those which more recently, and at the present moment, have startled the world by their fatal effects on men and animals.

Moreover, we cannot too often repeat the fact – in order that those documents relating to the past which contain useful instruction may be examined and searched into – that the physiological and pathological laws which rule and determine the phenomena of organic matter, whether in health or sickness, were, like the laws of chemistry, electricity, and astronomy, originally established at the time of creation, and that matter submits with passive obedience to the laws of transformation and transubstantiation, which are the absolute condition of life. These are the eternal laws of which a synthesis so admirable is furnished by the Gospel, in this short injunction, "Take, eat, this is my body; drink, this is my blood."

Now, if man, who is the sovereign master of this matter, did not take care to regulate and modify it for his own benefit and the benefit of all living creatures on whom his own life depends, as well as his wealth and happiness; if he did not seek thereby continually to diminish the sum of evil, and to extend the sum of good which it is his mission to increase, he would violate these laws, which are inherent in matter, and which have existed for his use since the creation of the world.

We must likewise believe that those Plagues which are spoken of in the Bible, those which Homer alludes to, that which is related by Plutarch, and which succeeded the general drought in 753 before Christ; those mentioned by Titus Livius, Virgil, Ovid, and other Latin authors, the most virulent of which plagues raged in the years 310, 212, and 178 of the Foundation of Rome, resembled the epidemics or plagues which are witnessed in our own day.

The plague of 212 swept away all the inhabitants of Sicily, cattle as well as men; that of 178 destroyed all the priests, who sought in vain for victims free from the contagion, to offer them up as sacrifices to the offended Gods.

Cecilius Severus gives a most striking description of a pestilential disease which, in 376 A.D., swept away all the cattle in Europe. Judging from his account of that scourge, we may fairly believe that the distemper he has described was identically the same as the one which has just broken out in England. "A universal distaste, sudden dejection, vertigoes, spasmodic tension in the limbs, a painful swelling of the lower belly, violent affections of the nerves, sudden death – everything shows the presence of a pestilential ferment, which irritates the solids, infects and vitiates the fluids, which is the cause of the putrefaction of the humours, manifested by the swelling of the 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

III

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, in its march, in its symptoms, and in its gravity. We believe that these three visitations constitute but one and the same malady, occurring at three different periods. This appears to us a most important fact, for if such be the case, the tentative treatment of that time deserves our most particular attention. Consequently, a few retrospective glances may perhaps be permitted us, in considering the subject of cattle disease.

The medical professors (including several English physicians), who observed and described the epizootia of 1745, divided the same into three periods.

The duration of the disease, when it passed through all its phases up to the death of the affected animal, consisting of from ten to twelve days, they usually ascribed to each of these periods or stages an average continuance of three or four days.

1st Period.– After a few days of latent incubation, which the observer could not suspect, the sick animal betrayed signs of the morbid state which was about to declare itself, by his careless feeding, by drooping his head, and by exhibiting the deepest dejection of spirits in his attitude and look. Rumination, already imperfect, soon ceased altogether, the appetite failed, the horns, ears, and hoofs were cold, the hair grew stiff, the tongue and mucus looked white; the eyes were tearful and fixed, the hearing obtuse, whilst, in the cows, the supply of milk diminished. In cases of unusual gravity, transient shiverings testified to a serious disturbance in all the animal functions. These shiverings were followed by a violent fever, the blood became inflamed, the breath hot, the respiration hurried and sometimes attended with slight coughing; when, if too violent a repercussion was transmitted to the nervous centres, the pressure on the vertebral line became intolerable, and the animal, seized with vertigo, and almost delirious with pain, would fall during this first period, as if struck by lightning.

The same phenomena are sometimes observed in the typhoid fever of man, which offers moreover some analogy with the contagious typhus of the ox; but as the ox and the horse have likewise the real typhus fever, they may some day supply us with the preventive virus for that fever, in the same manner as the cow now supplies us with the preventive virus for the small-pox.

2nd Period.– In most cases the disease pursued its course with greater or less regularity; the sick animal experienced gnawing pains or twitchings, and spasmodic shootings in the limbs, apparently attended with pain. His thirst was insatiable, but he had no appetite, the functions of the bladder and intestines were impeded, then diarrhœa supervened, accompanied with dry, fetid, and sometimes bloody excreta. Thick viscid mucosities dripped from the nostrils, mouth, and eyes. The dorsal regions and the loins were constantly aching, headache and sleeplessness were permanent. The animal continued either standing or lying down, and if he wanted to rest, he could not bend himself gradually, but would fall like an inert mass to the ground.

3rd Period.– Diarrhœa was continual, becoming more fetid every day, the wasting of flesh made rapid strides; the cellular tissue beneath the hide was filled with gas along the vertebral channels and under the abdomen; the nostrils were stopped up with mucosities, the animal could only breathe through the mouth, puffing and blowing aloud as he drew in the air; and at last pustular eruptions showed themselves on various parts; but as this depurating crisis was insufficient, the poor beast, in this final period of the attack, fell a sacrifice to it between the seventh and twelfth day. If he chanced to be lying down his agony was slow, but if standing, he would sink upon himself, and expire at once.

In this dreadful epizootia, very few of the smitten cattle survived – not more than four or five in a hundred; and in these favourable cases, the symptoms presented certain signs and critical phenomena of a happy omen. In these rare exceptions, the pulse did not exceed seventy, the beatings of the heart were always perceptible, the patient did not refuse to drink, the continuous fever exhibited no aggravation at night, pustular eruptions and tumours appeared on the dewlap and the fore limbs, and the epidermis over the mouth and nostrils peeled off about the twelfth day.

When dissected, the bodies offered to view the following alterations, the same having already been observed by Frascator during the prevalence of the epizootia in 1514, and by Lancisi and Ramazzini during that which was so fatal in 1711. The mucous glands of the mouth were livid, and occasionally excoriated; the bronchial tubes were obstructed with mucosities; the lungs, besides being partially congested, were sometimes emphysematous, that is, inflated with compressed air. Of the four stomachs, the rumen was full of food, the reticulum, the omasum, and the abomasum exhibited purple or livid spots, according to their place. The thin intestine and the thick intestine showed either a general injection, scattered livid spots, or ulcerations, according as the fever had worn the exanthematous or typhoid form; for the mucous membrane of the digestive channels, and especially that of the intestines, displays, like the external tegument in man and the brute creation, divers forms of inflammation, analogous with the measles, the scarlatina, and the small-pox; so that, if the typhoid fever in man, which is nothing else than the small-pox of the intestines, is so frequently cured, it is because the general morbid condition, the fever, often conceals different intestinal lesions, albeit they seem to be similar in the general symptoms, which taken collectively constitute the disease.

The flesh of these diseased animals was blackish, and devoid of blood; the animals which fed upon it, if uncooked, sickened afterwards, or died. The wrecks of the bodies, and more particularly the skin, sometimes retained a strength of contagion so deadly, that the mere exportation of them was enough to cause its propagation, and to this cause was at that time attributed the outbreak of the contagion in England.

An extraordinary case of this pernicious influence, which is related by Hartmann, who observed this epizootia at its decline in 1756, will give an idea of the subtlety of this malignant virus.

A farmer who had lost an ox in consequence of that virulent distemper, buried it in one of his fields. The following night a bear smelt the ox, raked it up with his feet, ate a portion of the flesh, and a few days after, the beast of prey was found dead in a neighbouring wood by a peasant in the parish of Eumaki. The skin belonging to this bear was magnificent. The peasant flayed the animal and carried home his skin in triumph. But his triumph was short; for that same night the poor countryman fell ill, and died two days after the attack. The magistrates of Wiburg, having heard of this occurrence, sent orders to have the infected skin burned. Meanwhile, the skin had been given to the curate of the place as a compensation for the offices of burial; but his cupidity having persuaded him that this fine skin could not have destroyed the peasant whom he had just buried, he did not burn it at all, but induced another peasant to clean and dress it for him. This simple fellow and two other clodpoles, who assisted him in the preparation, fell ill, and all three of them died in the course of a few days. A new and peremptory order now came from Wiburg to burn this skin, to burn the house in which it had been dressed, to burn even the presbytery itself, should it be deemed necessary. The skin had already passed through several hands. However, the curate being still reluctant to part with it, took it home again. "Can it be possible," said he to himself, "that this skin has really proved fatal to life? What can have been the cause, I wonder?" At the same time he rubbed it in his hands and smelt it. Unlucky curate! A few days afterwards he himself was taken ill and died. (Memoirs of the Academy of Stockholm.)

A native of Clermont Ferrand, in the department of Puy de Dôme, in France, the birth-place of Pascal, one day finding an ox which had died of the epizootia, stripped off the skin and carried it away. After his return home, the black typhus, and then gangrene, broke out on one of his arms, which had to be cut off, and the patient died of the effects of the amputation.

A butcher having slaughtered an ox smitten with this typhus, sold the flesh for meat to some soldiers of the Regiment Royal Bavière, then garrisoned in one of the towns of Languedoc. All those who partook of this meat were seized with diarrhœa, dysentery, and fever, and several of the sick soldiers very nearly died. The butcher, whose avarice had caused all this mischief, had richly deserved some exemplary punishment, and some of the sufferers proposed that he should be hanged outright, but the majority, more clement, sentenced him to be beaten black and blue with horsewhips.

The popular saying, when the beast is dead the poison is dead, being generally true, the virulence of the contagion, in the above instances, possessed venomous properties of an exceptional character, for if every sick animal slaughtered by the butchers and sold to the consumers, or those which had been flayed for the sake of the skin, had contained so murderous a virus in their tissues, the number of victims to the contagion among the human species would have been appalling. And in that case, too, similar sacrifices would be witnessed at present, for it cannot be doubted that, in the actual state of the meat market in London, the people are now in the daily habit of eating the flesh of cattle which are diseased.

IV

Physicians of different countries have naturally bestowed much time and care in considering and discussing the nature of this epizootia, because they have felt that a satisfactory theory and appreciation of its principal phenomena, might afford the medical faculty a rational basis for some special treatment.

Layard and the physicians of Geneva have considered this cattle disease to be a malignant fever with an eruptive tendency.

In the estimation of the faculties of Paris and Montpellier, this cattle disease, considered in its symptoms, was nothing more than a malignant fever essentially contagious, the action of which appeared to tend exclusively towards the skin, and therefore it was rational to provoke external eruptions and deposits which, as they matured, diverted from the centre the greatest part of the morbific matter.

The treatment, to which, above all, we invite the reader's attention (more particularly that of medical men), necessarily varied according to the period of the disease. It was sometimes preservative, sometimes curative, as the case might be.

The Preventive Treatment.– The farmers and cattle-breeders, whose herds were still exempt from the contagion, mindful of the advice which they received through the public press, took very particular care of their cattle during this season of epizootia: they rubbed them over with a brush, and washed them at least once a day; they sheltered them from the inclemency of wind and rain; they took their milch cows, which until then they had kept shut up in unhealthy cow-houses, into the open air of the fields; they washed and fumigated the stables; they examined the quality of the fodder and of the other articles of food; they added marine salt to their drinking water, or poured salt water over their forage; and above all, they took care that no foreign animal commingled with their flocks and herds.

Some physicians, on their side conscious of the duty which devolves upon them in such seasons of calamity, instead of resting satisfied with recommending remedies, betook themselves boldly to the work, and studied the disease experimentally in respect to its propagation and prevention.

Thus, for instance, certain Dutch physicians, in 1754, wishing to know whether the morbid matter would transmit the disease by inoculation, made incisions in the necks of some oxen, cows and calves, inserting in the wound a little tow saturated with the morbid secretions discharged from the eyes and nostrils. This direct inoculation having been practised on seventeen animals, transmitted the disease to them all in the course of a few days.

The English physicians having been made acquainted with these experiments, applied them to a more practical purpose, no longer to discover whether the disease could thus be transmitted (for that had been proved), but to find out (what was far more important) whether this fearful distemper could be prevented and kept off.

Malcolm Flemming, in 1755, merely suggested the idea of inoculation as a preventive means, without proceeding to a course of experiments to ratify his opinion. He intimates his notion in the following terms: —

"I apprehend that inoculation will stand the better chance of bringing on the distemper, if the subject it is performed on is as young as safety will permit, the vessels being then most absorbent, and the animal economy most easily put into disorder.

"But even in case the inoculation of calves should be found so successful as universally to prevail, the method I recommend will not be altogether useless; for, by being properly modelled and adapted to circumstances, it may, I am persuaded, prevent contagion, and likewise act as a preparative in any epidemical affection of the inflammatory kind, not only in horned cattle, but likewise in all other quadrupeds that civil society may think worthy of preservation, and even in the human species."

Layard, in 1757, devotes the seventh chapter of his work, "The Means to prevent the Infection," to the consideration of the preventive treatment, in which he says: —

"No one will think of bringing the infection into any place free from it, merely for the sake of inoculating their cattle; but if the contagious distemper be in the neighbourhood of a herd, or break out so as to endanger the stock, the grazier or farmer may, by inoculating his cattle, with proper precautions, at least secure his stock, since he can house them before they fall sick, prepare them, and have due care taken, knowing the course of the distemper.

"Sir William St. Quintin, the Rev. Dr. Fountayne, Dean of York, and other gentlemen have succeeded in inoculation: in Holland it has both failed and succeeded. These gentlemen all inoculated with matter taken from the running of the mouth, nose, or eyes. Professor Swenke mentions that the beast from which he took the matter was recovering from the distemper. A circumstance to be attended to is this: – had matter been taken after the crisis, from a tumour, boil, pimple, or scab, either on the back near the spine, or on the legs, the pus would have proved much more elaborated, subtle, and infecting than that which, flowing with the mucus of the nose, must necessarily be, in some degree, sheathed by this glutinous excretion, though I am well aware how putrid and acrid it is rendered by the disease.

"That nothing may be omitted which in any shape can contribute to the success of inoculation, due attention should be paid to the constitution and state of the beast, no less in this practice on the cattle than on the human species. Undoubtedly the young, healthy, and strong bid fairer for a good issue than the old, sickly, and feeble; each of these different constitutions demand a particular treatment, even in the method of preparation; and however trifling it may seem to many – the urging a necessity of preparation – I will venture to affirm that I have seen excellent effects arising from a rational preparation, and fatal events from want of preparation. I have likewise been witness of unfavourable turns, merely from an injudicious preparation.

"The beasts which are sanguine require moderate bleeding; those that have but a small share of blood must have none drawn. The strong must, besides moderate bleeding and purging, be kept on light diet, and their body kept open. Thus, scalded bran, mixed with their hay and chaff, will cool them. The weakly, and such as are inclined to scour, must be kept on dry fodder, and have peas and beans given them to strengthen them. A mess of malt, or a quart of warm ale, with a few spices, will be very suitable for them.

"Whatever diseases the cattle may be affected with, if time will permit, they are first to be removed.

"The cattle to be inoculated are first to be well washed, rubbed dry, and then curried, to remove all the filth from the hair and skin. Then they are to be placed in a spacious barn or stable, where the air is temperate and no cold can come to them. There they are to be prepared according to the direction already given, foddered with good sweet hay, and watered with clear spring water; and if the distemper be not near, they may be turned out into the air, near the barn or stable, and may stay there a few hours in the middle of the day.

"When it appears that the cattle are in perfect health, free from any infection or disease, brisk and lively, neither costive nor scouring, and chewing their cud, then the operation may be safely undertaken, and henceforth they must be confined to the barn.

"Since there is observed to follow the greatest flow of the contagious and putrid particles separated from the blood, wherever the infectious matter makes an impression at first, particular care must be taken not to inoculate near such vital parts as the heart and lungs, nor near the womb, if a cow with calf be inoculated; for, though rowels are properly applied 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.

V

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 position, England may be less exposed to it than other countries, it is, however, necessary to take note of what may serve for our instruction in the several epizootics which will pass under our view.

Medical writers relate that contagious typhus broke out several times in Holland during the years 1768, 1769, and 1770; it also appeared in French Flanders in 1771, in Hainault in 1773. In France one particular spot was, at this period, completely rendered intact by drawing a sanitary fence about its limits, and bestowing on the cattle particular hygienic attention as a safeguard. The stables of these animals were washed, cleansed, and fumigated; spring water was given them to drink, their food was chosen with care, and a certain quantity of salt was mixed with it.

In 1774, Holland, a cold and damp country, was once more invaded by the scourge; and the Government offered in vain a reward of 80,000 florins to any one who should discover the preventive or specific remedy for the disease.

The typhus which, at that epoch, had likewise broken out again in the south of France, threatened to become an abiding peril to the wealth of nations. Two French authors, Vicq d'Azyr and Paulet, betook themselves earnestly to the task of collecting every document which up to that time had been published on the successive visitations of the malady, and of offering the means of preventing it. Their intention was unquestionably laudable, but the time for obtaining such a result had not yet arrived; besides which, these two writers, whatever may have been their desert, were not equal to an achievement of this character. They belonged, indeed, to that order of men who look upon the cultivation of science solely as a step to personal distinction.

Vicq d'Azyr himself was but twenty-five years old when he issued, in 1775, his work, entitled, "Exposé des Moyens curatifs et preservatifs qui peuvent être employés contre les Maladies des Bêtes à Cornes." We should deceive ourselves if we expected to find in this exposition anything but an interesting compilation of the works already published.

Paulet's treatise appeared likewise in 1775, under the title, "Recherches historiques et physiques sur les Maladies epizootiques, avec les Moyens d'y rémédier dans tous les Cas, publiées par ordre du Roi." Paris. Two volumes.

After reading and reflecting on this title, as servile as it is arrogant, I might have dispensed with all examination of the work. A scientific man, whilst in the pursuit of truth, takes orders from nobody, not even from kings. Paulet, therefore, writing by order, could only produce a work of mediocrity, and such is incontestably the degree of value of his two volumes, forming, as they do, a fastidious dissertation of epizootics in general, and of those relating to cattle in particular.

The works of Paulet and Vicq d'Azyr, written at the same time, not being the labour of men practising the medical art, are on a level as to the notions which they have handed down to us; but that of Vicq d'Azyr being the better of the two, we shall extract therefrom what may chiefly interest us.

Vicq d'Azyr relates the history of the epizootics, and expatiates on the original cause of the typhus in horned cattle, and on its nature. The passages in which he treats of its mode of propagation and its treatment, are the most deserving of our notice.

He says, that he tried to no purpose to communicate the disease a second time to animals which had been fortunate enough to get cured.

That cows covered with the fresh skins stripped from dead cattle, victims to the distemper, did not contract it.

That infected clothes which had been worn by men who had served in hospitals where cattle were under treatment, having been laid on the backs of several beasts in sound health, were found to transmit the distemper in three cases out of six.

That the gases expelled from the intestines, received into a bladder ball, and let out under the noses of healthy cattle, have communicated the disease to them, after ten or fifteen days of latent incubation; and that the same gases being mixed with their drink, have also propagated the contagion.

That frictions, with the hands impregnated with virus, having been made over the skin, did not produce any ill effects.

That some oxen which had been designedly placed for a few hours among sick animals, have afterwards been seized with the distemper.

That a calf which had been placed in a stall containing some oxen grievously affected, but which calf had a basket beneath its nose filled with aromatic herbs, withstood the contagion.

That cowsheds which had been partially cleansed and fumigated, transmitted the disease to other cattle, even several months after they had been vacated.

Finally, he mentions the experiments of inoculation made by Lay and in England, but not understanding their aim and capacity, he adds, that inoculation does not seem to him of any use, since the inoculated animals all died. Yet he quotes the encouraging results obtained by Camper in Holland, who, out of 112 inoculated cattle, saved 41; and those of Koopman, who, out of 94, cured 45 by this very inoculation.

He reminds us that the cattle typhus is an abiding disease in Hungary and Russia, where the beasts having bad water to drink, can only be protected by a constant use of marine salt (sel gemme); but being deprived of this salt, when they go great distances to be sold, and being exposed to extreme fatigue and privations, the typhus then spreads among them. He likewise tells us that Hungary and Dalmatia, which used to supply the markets of Italy with butcher's meat, were obliged to give up sending any cattle there, the Italians having firmly refused to purchase the same at any price whatever.

As regards treatment, the advice which Vicq d'Azyr gives to agriculturists, is mostly borrowed from the authors who have written on the great epizootics of 1711, and 1745 to 1755. Thus, he advises them to give as drinks in the first stage, water whitened with meal and nitred; to purge the animals with linseed oil; even to make scarifications on the skin, and to keep up the suppuration with turpentine; to make the animals inhale six times a day vapours seasoned with vinegar; to wrap them over with woollen cloths; to bleed them once or twice; to administer to them, when diarrhœa shows itself, a beverage containing wormwood, quinine, and diascordium; to cut open the tumours containing pus or air, etc.

It is, as is seen, the same treatment as that quoted above; he guarantees its success, and supports his views by the authority of Van Swieten and Huxan.

Van Swieten, however, had somewhat modified the treatment, by the predominance which he allowed to acids; and this course seemed to him to be only reasonable with respect to animals whose sick humours contain an excess of alkali.

Vicq d'Azyr fixed his attention on the means of prevention, the most effectual of which, in his opinion, was to slaughter every animal which had either sickened, or had been exposed to the influence of the contagion; and as he insisted that the authorities had no measures to keep in this matter of public interest, he made it a principle that the government was bound to compensate the cattle proprietors whose animals had to be killed – the more so, said he, that the crafty husbandmen would never come forward and freely declare the invalidity of their cattle, unless some indemnity were held out to them, which they would look upon as a sort of equivalent for the benefits they had expected by cutting them up and selling them as the food of man.

The doctors of the period, scenting in Vicq d'Azyr a dangerous competitor, considered the advice of exterminating the diseased cattle as an ingenious means of curing them, and as the author's age and experience gave warrant for this satirical tone of discussion, the public joined them in laughing at him.

The epizootic typhus, if not so destructive, was at least as frequent in the early part of the nineteenth century, as it had been during the eighteenth. The armies during the wars of united Europe against the French Republic and Empire, found it constantly in their train. Nor could it be otherwise, the two leading causes of its prevalence being at hand. For on one hand there was the transit of large herds from the steppes of Hungary, and on the other the wretched hygienic conditions amidst which the cattle had to live in the campaigning armies.

Many books have been published of late years on the diseases of cattle, in France and Germany; and several distinguished English veterinary surgeons, especially Professor Simonds, have also devoted their attention to the same subject. In the second part of this work, we shall have occasion to refer to their labours.

In France, Renault, Delafond, d'Arboval, Gellé, whose works enjoy a deserved reputation, have discussed the subject of the origin of this disease.

Renault asserts that the disease has but one single focus, the steppes of Russia and Hungary. The epizootics of Asia, Africa, and South America are caused, he considers, by the importation of animals to those countries. It is thus that he explains the epizootia which, under the name of Delombodera, devastated the American Republics in 1832, and that which, in 1841, appeared in Egypt. Renault thinks that neither the long transit, nor the filthy state of the markets, nor the most wretched feeding, are sufficient to account for contagious typhus among cattle; that in addition to these causes, it still requires, in order to produce and generate it among animals, a predisposition, and a special aptitude, such as, hitherto at least, do not appear to have been witnessed except in the progeny of the steppes.

The other professors of his fraternity have submitted arguments to him, which to us seem very rational; and we will endeavour to do justice to them when we discuss the origin of the typhus which at this moment is afflicting England.

VI

These historical dissertations and speculations on the subject of the bovine epizootia certainly deserve to draw the attention of all who feel an interest in the malady; but how insignificant they are compared with the concluding facts which I have still to mention, before I at length address myself to the consideration of the epizootia which is now consuming our herds!

The indisputable fact that so terrible a distemper as this typhus had fixed itself permanently in Russia, and that it was causing incalculable losses to the lordly proprietors of the steppes, as well as to the government, roused them at last from their indifference. Then, indeed, they urged the veterinary doctors to adopt some energetic means to arrest the long duration of the scourge, and we must admit to their honour, that various experiments which were tried for the purpose of preventing the evil, have been crowned with complete success. Any one may ascertain the fact by referring to the Journal Magazin of Berlin, in which the learned Professor Jessen of Dorpat has explained the results of these important experiments.

The Russian veterinarians having observed that the oxen which had been cured of the typhus could mingle with impunity with the infected herds, conceived the idea of communicating the complaint to sound cattle by means of inoculation, and thereby to shield them from the contagion.

The first experiments in the inoculation of Tchouma or cattle typhus, were made in the year 1853, by order of the government, in the neighbourhood of Odessa, at the Heridin farm, by Professor Jessen.

The first inoculative attempts were very fatal; they caused the death of all the inoculated animals. But it was soon perceived that these grievous results, far from prejudicing the theory, really confirmed it; and that the virus, attenuated in its toxical properties, would prove as effectual as was expected. And truly, in 1854 and 1855, at the Dorpat establishment, the inoculations made with a better selected virus afforded results less disastrous. At Kozau they were still more satisfactory. In fine, passing from experiment to experiment, they arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to inoculate several heads of cattle, the one after the other, without having recourse to any other virus than the first inoculated, so that they might thereby obtain virus of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and up to the 10th generation. The virus thus attenuated in its morbid effects answered at length every experiment, and oxen thus inoculated could mingle with impunity with diseased cattle.

At the veterinary establishment of Chalkoff they inoculated, during eight meetings, 1059 animals with virus of the 3rd generation, and the results were as satisfactory as could be wished for, only 60 animals having sunk under the effects of this preventive operation.

The inoculations made in 1857 and 1858 on an estate belonging to the Duchess Helena, at Karlowska, in the government of Pultawa, and conducted by the veterinarian Raussels, likewise afforded the most satisfactory results.

Professor Jessen thinks it certain, that beasts born of cows which have been afflicted with contagious typhus do not contract the disease. He maintains that Europe may be preserved from this frightful scourge, by taking care that no cattle be exported from the steppes of Russia save those which have had the distemper either naturally or by inoculation, and he is striving to propagate this opinion, and to render it practical, by having all the cattle inoculated, without exception.

It is deeply to be regretted that counsels so prudent have not been heeded in the 47 governments which, out of the 53 possessed by Russia, have generated the contagious typhus; for then it would not so frequently have effected its passage into the neighbouring states, and England most probably, would not now have to take up arms against its fatal extension.

VII

We here conclude that part of our labour which includes the history of this disease, and what we have been able to glean from those medical writers, and others, who have given us the results of their experience. It may have appeared somewhat protracted, but it has at least laid open to the student the antecedent investigations of our predecessors, under calamities of the same kind, but considerably more fatal than what has yet been witnessed in Western Europe during our time. We have disinterred and brought to light the forgotten works of conscientious and competent men. Like Brunelleschi, the architect, we have sought, not to invent a theory, but to recover a practice; and thus we have received the observations and precious facts, and finally the preventive treatment, of other men and other times, which had coped successfully against the cattle disease when its ravages were infinitely greater.

To resume, then: these inquiries (which we undertook without anticipating so rich a harvest) have proved, and made evident —

That the contagious typhus afflicting horned cattle, has spread its destructive principle over our globe ever since there have been animals living on its surface.

That from century to century, not to say from year to year, it has carried its terrors amidst nations and peoples.

That the remedial measures which had been taken and applied prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, were utterly powerless either to cure this disease or to prevent it.

That at that period appeared two English physicians, men of remarkable aptitude and penetration, one of whom, Malcolm Flemming, laid down in theory the bases of a preventive treatment; whilst the other, Peter Layard, applied this theory to practice, by inoculating sound and healthy animals with the morbid virus of the typhus, in order to protect them from the fatal effects of the contagion.

That this all-important progress in medical experience, has been absolutely forgotten; so much so, indeed, that the experiments of inoculation, tried in Russia only ten or twelve years ago with perfect success, do not seem to be connected by any link with those made in England a century before, and that the invasion of the so-called Cattle Plague in 1865 seemed to some men to have introduced a new scourge, which men were not armed and prepared to meet – which they were powerless to cure, or to stay in its progress.

These inquiries, then, have proved, we think, that we are not so helpless as we had imagined to resist the evil. But we cannot help feeling, that we have laid bare in this exposition some most distressing inferences concerning the human mind. For, in truth, can anything be more deplorable, than thus to see the civilized nations of Europe endure, from century to century, these reiterated outbreaks of cattle typhus, and to see likewise that no man of sufficient energy and independence has yet arisen to tell the truth fearlessly to the governments and peoples, however painful that truth may be, and to expose the futility of the measures hitherto employed to arrest the scourge?

And, on the other hand, is it not most afflicting to see discoveries of indisputable value buried out of view, submerged in public libraries, utterly unknown and forgotten, like their authors, to such a degree, that the distemper which they have made known in its entirety, and which is as old as the world itself, seems to us almost new in 1865?

God send, that these cruel trials and severe lessons which the past has bequeathed to us may teach us something for our benefit! May the irresistible might which is derived from the auspicious union of capital and intelligence supersede the vain and flimsy efforts of isolated energy! May the government, which lavishes hundreds of millions upon the destructive engines of war, devote some portion of its ample means to the study of hereditary infections and contagious diseases! For these fatal epidemics decimate men as well as cattle, and we may at least ward off from our children the desolating disease which at present afflicts ourselves.

We possess already every requisite means to protect ourselves from the formidable visitation of these diseases: we have science; we have the men who cultivate and teach it; we have the experience of the past added to our own. To-day, we are called upon to resist the baleful effects of cattle typhus; but another epizootia may come to-morrow, and strike our horses and our sheep – those domestic animals which constitute our most precious possession. The cholera hovers about us. If we do nothing, if we talk and debate instead of acting, these scourges will come upon us on a sudden, and find us quite as helpless as ever to resist their sway.

These palpable truths deserve to be further developed, and will be treated more copiously at the end of this book. They will constitute the complement of our work, necessarily written in haste, since the danger we had to expose was itself so urgent and alarming.