244 Report on Steppe Murrain or Rinderpest. 



by no means improbable, and the opinion receives support from 

 the circumstance that in numberless instances persons visiting 

 the sick cattle have conveyed the pest to other animals of the ox 

 tribe. Thus we see that, in these particulars the disease agrees 

 with the small-pox of sheep, or with the plague, small-pox, &c., 

 of man, and that it is as infectious among cattle as the latter- 

 named diseases are among ourselves. 



There have been doubters of the infectious nature of the rin- 

 derpest, and whenever speculation has been allowed to take the 

 place of facts, although it may seemingly have had science as 

 its basis, great injury has resulted to those most interested in the 

 question. A notable instance of this kind has been furnished us 

 by Professor Renault, Director of the Alfort Veterinary School, 

 and through his kindness we are enabled to transcribe the fol- 

 lowing particulars. 



" Towards the end of 1844 the rinderpest, Avhich had prevailed 

 among the cattle in Galicia, passed through Moravia and made 

 its appearance in Bohemia, in the circle of Koniggriitz. The 

 malady had already made some progress in the district, when 

 M. Werner, chief of the Veterinary Department of Bohemia, was 

 sent from Prague by the government to inquire into the precise 

 nature of the affection. This gentleman, who had had many 

 opportunities of seeing the rinderpest, had no difficulty in 

 recognising this disease in the malady in question, and, with a 

 view to arrest its further progress, he recommended to the superior 

 authorities the adoption of those measures which experience had 

 shown to be best calculated not only for this, but to cause its 

 quick extermination : namely, to slaughter the sick animals, 

 isolate those which had been exposed to the contagion, and 

 establish a cordon around the infected places. These measures 

 were put in force at once, and soon had the effect of arresting the 

 further progress of the malady, when some young physicians, 

 who had had an opportunity of making for their instruction some 

 post mortem examinations of the cattle, thought that they re- 

 cognised in the affection an analogy to that of the typhus 

 ahdominalis of man. They, therefore, communicated their 

 opinion to some members of the faculty of medicine at Prague, 

 who, after making several autopsies, came to the same con- 

 clusion. A report was accordingly sent to the government 

 setting forth that the malady was not contagious, that it could 

 arise spontaneously amozigst the horned cattle of the country, by 

 other influences than those of contagion, and that the means 

 which the government had adopted were not only useless but 

 vexatious. As the faculty had great authority in all sanitary 

 matters, the government, although it did not entirely remove 



