25G The Cattle-Plague. 



temperature, and tlie like ; and wc find tliem readily enough in 

 the three years' severe droug-ht previous to the autumn of 1865. 

 The scorched pastures, the ill-nourished hay and straw and root- 

 crops, and the defective supply of w^ater, subjected our domesti- 

 cated animals to privations that must have materially reduced 

 their ability to resist the attacks of disease. 



I will only further remark that the Avhole question of prcdis- 

 posinq causes is of the deepest concern to farmers. A thorough 

 investigation in this direction would probably explain the appa- 

 rently spontaneous origin of the plague in some districts and its 

 apparently capricious propagation, and would moreover, perhaps, 

 reconcile the antagonistic views of " contagionists " and " non- 

 contagionists." Above all, such investigations, making known 

 all the circumstances under which the disease is propagated, might 

 be preventive of its diffusion now, and lead to the prevention of 

 any revisitation in future, or at least to its assuming a modified 

 form. 



We now come to the practical part of this great subject. 

 Treatment, which must be discussed under two heads : — 

 1. Curative. 2. Preventive. 



" Whatever may be the merits of the English in other sciences, 

 they seem particularly excellent in the art of healing. There is 

 scarcely a disorder incident to humanity against which they are 

 not possessed with a most infallible antidote. The professors of 

 other arts confess the inevitable intricacy of things, talk with 

 doubt, and decide with hesitation ; but doubting is entirely 

 unknown in medicine." Thus wrote a well-known author in 

 the last centurv. Whether intended or not, the pungency of the 

 satire is considerable. Under present circumstances, when the 

 disciple of j.'Esculapius has made way for the knacker, we are 

 fully able to appreciate it. 



It cannot be denied that a sensible change is coming over the 

 medical mind. Whatever may be the credulity of their patients, 

 the doctors are becoming sceptical of their own power. They 

 depend less upon the application of a specific antidote than upon 

 throwing an aegis around the vital parts, and drawing off and 

 diverting the threatened attack of the enemy, as the JNIatadore 

 plays with and exhausts the bull in the arena. They undoubtedly 

 possess two or three remedies that in some unexplained manner 



Edinburgh, and in Cheshire, the best kept cows have suffered with the worst, it 

 may be as well to remind the objector that an epidemic will, when it acquires 

 sufficient force, leap beyond the rags and filth that generate it, and carry death 

 and sorrow to the salubrious abodes of the wealthy. In mentioning Cheshire, 

 Mr. Bailey Denton's remarks on the sad state of the shippons there, occurs to me. 

 He describes them (of course with exceptions) as low, close, cramped, and stifling. 

 In these buildings the temperature ranges at the cows' heads at 00^, at their tails 

 at 30-\ Of town dairies I need say nothing. 



