The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, description, and treatment, by Honoré Bourguignon This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: On the cattle plague: or, Contagious typhus in horned cattle. Its history, origin, description, and treatment Author: Honoré Bourguignon Release Date: June 22, 2011 [EBook #36496] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE CATTLE PLAGUE *** Produced by Barbara Kosker, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net ON THE CATTLE PLAGUE: OR, Contagious Typhus in Horned Cattle. ITS HISTORY, ORIGIN, DESCRIPTION, AND TREATMENT. BY H. BOURGUIGNON, Doctor of the Faculté de Paris, Fellow of the Société de Médecine de Paris; Laureate of the Institute of France, Member of the Legion of Honour, etc. "Scribo nec ficta, nee picta, sed quæ ratio, sensus et experientia docent." PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. LONDON: J CHURCHILL & SONS. 1869. TO MISS BURDETT COUTTS. Madam, The numerous services which you have rendered, and the interest you have shown in the calamitous epizootic which at this moment decimates the noble herds of England, have prompted me to dedicate the following pages to you, satisfied that I am only giving public expression to the homage felt for you by many of your fellow-countrymen. I have the honour to be, Madam, With respect, your obedient servant, H. BOURGUIGNON. PREFACE. Nations, during the successive phases of their evolution on the globe, in which they advance from a state of infancy and barbarism to one of virility and civilization, from civilization to decadence or senility; and from decadence to their final extinction, are liable to numberless calamities. These calamities are produced by moral causes, and are then called social Revolutions; and in other instances from physical causes, and then they are termed Cataclysms, Epidemics, or Epizootics. In these crises, the initiative and devotion of individuals, the public administration, and the application of knowledge acquired in the Arts and Sciences, afford collectively an infallible criterion for ascertaining the position which a nation occupies in the scale of civilization, and the value of its religious, social, and political institutions. Calamities always leave behind them disasters and victims, but they bequeath also a precious legacy. Nations which are called upon for fresh and progressive efforts, find in the experience they have gained a new source of strength and means of future greatness. I am convinced that this will be the case with England; though, helpless for the moment, and unable to stay the Cattle Plague which now ravages her entire extent, she will in future be found better prepared to resist the inroads of such a direful enemy. No branch of human knowledge has been more rudely tested during the present epizootic than medical science. Many persons have been astounded at its helplessness; but if they had reflected at what a distance medicine has to follow in the wake of the exact sciences by which it is furnished with instruments for prosecuting its researches,—that organic chemistry progresses but slowly,—that the Cattle Plague was entirely unknown to the present generation of medical men in England,—and that the means for its scientific and practical study have been therefore wholly wanting, they would have been less surprised to find that it is as difficult to cure the Cattle Plague as it, is to cure phthisis, cancer, hydrophobia, and the cholera, against which medicine but too often is of little avail. In times of great national calamity it behoves every one to contribute in proportion to his talents, fortune, or abilities, to alleviate the effects of the common misfortune. The poor man's mite, and the honest intention of the most insignificant, when added to the budget of common efforts, have their relative value; and it is for these reasons that I have published the following monograph on the Cattle Plague. If it assists in any way to the extinction of the present epizootic, or if it serve to point out the necessity of combining the study of comparative pathology with that of medicine, I shall feel that I have contributed something which may favour my claim to be enrolled among the citizens of England. This book, as may easily be seen, was originally written in my native language. A few kind and obliging friends—more particularly Mr. Taylor Sinnett, Drs. Clapton and Gervis, of St. Thomas's Hospital, and Mr. Berridge, of the British Museum—have rendered me the greatest assistance in the translation. Without the guidance of such competent auxiliaries I could not have performed my arduous task. I therefore beg to return to those gentlemen, and to all those who have assisted me on this occasion, my sincerest and most grateful thanks. H. B. [Pg vii] [Pg viii] [Pg ix] [Pg x] [Pg xi] CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction 1 FIRST PART. The History of the Contagious Typhus of the Ox, from the remotest Times down to the Present Day 5 SECOND PART. Chapter I.—On Typhus Disease in general, and the Typhus which affects the Ox in particular 72 Chapter II.—The Origin and Causes of the Ox-Typhus 84 Chapter III.—Description of the Contagious Typhus of the Ox; its Symptoms, Course, Progress, &c. 140 1. Symptomatic Characteristics 141 2. Lesions found in the Bodies after Death 163 3. Diagnosis—Prognosis—Use of the Flesh of Animals—Danger of direct Absorption 173 4. General Considerations on the Typhus, and Recapitulation of the Symptoms 191 Chapter IV.—Treatment of the Ox-Typhus 206 1 & 2. Means and Measures to be employed to resist the Causes of Contagious Typhus of the Bovine Species 208 3. Curative Medication 237 4. Hygienic Measures to be taken against the Extension of the Contagion—Acts and Orders concerning sanitary Police Regulations 257 THIRD PART. To Farmers and Graziers 281 FOURTH PART. Suggestions on the Improvements to be effected in the Study of Medical Science, in order that we may be in a Condition to confront Disease generally, and Epizootic and Epidemic Diseases in particular 311 APPENDIX. Various Documents 337 INTRODUCTION. Everyone is talking of the Cattle Plague! But why should we borrow this sinister and gloomy denomination from the middle ages and from the people's vocabulary? Is this, then, an unknown and incurable disease? Is this the first time that it has made its appearance on the soil of Great Britain? To judge by the manner in which the diffusion of this complaint has been met, accounted for, explained, and discussed, one might imagine it was so; and yet the mere observation of its causes, its symptoms, and its signs and effects on the bodies of the diseased animals, besides a few references to the medical library, would easily have testified that nature did not wait until the second half of the 19th century to generate a new distemper. No! Nothing new has appeared for a long time in the worlds of space. The cosmic phenomena pursue their perpetual course, and the organic phenomena, à fortiori, do the same. Life, throughout the whole range of the animal kingdom, whatever may be its changes and fluctuations, submits to the fixed and invariable laws which hold dominion over health and disease. Our presumption and ignorance alone can account for the astonishment we manifest, not only when we witness great general calamities, but even when we look upon those simple morbid derangements which organic matter, both animal and vegetable, is continually undergoing on the globe, in the natural progress of destruction and dissolution. The habit we most of us have contracted of confining our observations to the phenomena which strike our eyes, instead of fixing them on the general causes by which these phenomena have been produced; the forgetfulness of some, in others the want of acquaintance with general and comparative pathology, have in this instance led many conscientious inquirers to misapprehend both the nature and the treatment of the cattle complaint. It is in vain that we have subdivided and classed medical science—in vain that we have arbitrarily instituted a veterinary medicine and a human medicine; nature, in her acts, has no such subtleties. With nature, organic matter is organic matter, life is life; and although it may be true that both organic matter and life become more complex, and continue to rise in perfection till they reach man, it is quite as true that the laws of pathology and physiology are the same in all, and that it is just as difficult to cure the typhus of the ox as that of man. As, therefore, it is because we overlooked these fundamental truths, that the outbreak of the cattle distemper found us unprepared, we must treat the subject with all the gravity which is its due. Let it not, however, be feared that the special fact of the so-called Cattle Plague will be lost sight of amidst a crowd of scientific generalities. No; collateral reflections, seemingly foreign to the main argument, will concur to elucidate it; and all these rays of light will converge to a common centre, reflecting, we flatter ourselves, some evident facts and practical truths. [Pg xii] [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] This work on the contagious typhus of the ox is divided into four principal parts. The first part contains the history of this typhus from the remotest times down to the present day. It is divided into several sections. The second part, which gives the description of the disease, is subdivided into four chapters. The first chapter treats of general typhus, in order that a perfect understanding may be arrived at as to the name and definition of the particular distemper which affects the ox. The second relates to the causes and origin of the disease. The third treats of its symptoms, its progress, &c. The fourth contains its mode of treatment. The third part gives some plain instructions for the benefit of farmers, cattle-dealers, and dairymen. The fourth part gives a development of the scientific means and safeguards to be adopted, in order that this country shall never relapse into that state of helpless panic to which a want of preparation exposed it when the present epizootia began its ravages. FIRST PART. 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 [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] 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, [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] "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. [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] 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.[A] 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 [Pg 25] [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] [Pg 33] 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. [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] [Pg 36] [Pg 37] [Pg 38] [Pg 39] [Pg 40] 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),...