218 Report on Steppe Muj-rain or Rindeipest. 



unless accompanied l)y satisfactory certificates of health. The 

 importation also of cattle from England and Scotland into Sweden 

 was prohibited in the same month. These precautionary 

 measures on the part of Sweden were quickly followed by the 

 promulgation of similar ones by the government of Norway, 

 being in each case evidently founded on the belief that contagion 

 is the chief, if not the only, cause of the spread of pleuro- 

 pneumonia. 



LiJBECK. 



From the circumstance that her Majesty's Government, by 

 " the Order in Council " of April 2nd, saw fit to prohibit the 

 importation into England " of cattle, horns, hoofs, raw or wet 

 hides or skins of cattle, which shall come from, or shall have 

 been at any place within the territories of the free city of Liibeck," 

 as well as other places named in the said order, it was to be 

 expected that the so-called " steppe murrain " (rinderpest) 

 would be found to be prevailing among the cattle of Liibeck. 

 We were informed, howevei", immediately on our arrival, that no 

 such disease existed, and we had ample opportunities of sub- 

 sequently confirming the correctness of this statement. Indeed 

 rinderpest has never shown itself in the territory since 1813-15, 

 when by the movement of troops throughout^urope it prevailed 

 rather extensively both here and also in most countries of the 

 Continent. 



The precautionary measui'es which were taken in the spring of 

 1856, by the Senate of Liibeck, had ei^pecial reference to pleuro- 

 imeumoma, which disease had somewhat suddenly made its 

 appearance in the adjoining Duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin 

 and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. .Some doubt, however, was felt in 

 this country as to whether the " steppe murrain " had not found 

 its way thence from Prussia: and this was considerably increased 

 by the official reports of Mr. J, A. Blackwell, who up to the 

 beginning of the present year was British Vice-Consul at Liibeck. 

 In two despatches dated respectively May 17th and 30th, 1856, 

 Mr. Blackwell informed her Majesty's Government, through the 

 Consul-General at Hamburg, that a contagious pulmonary disease 

 or mvirrain had broken out among the cattle in Mecklenburg ; 

 and after giving the particulars of the precautionary measures 

 adopted by the Liibeck authorities to prevent its entrance into 

 their territories, he states that he had consulted several of the 

 best German authors on the contagious maladies of cattle, and 

 found that they made a distinction between " rinderpest and 

 pulmonary murrain ;" but he adds, " both are equally contagious 

 and almost erpially fatal, and in a sanitary point of view may iti 

 fact be regarded as identical' Mr. Blackwell next gives in the 



