PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 403 



the herds of Europe, and in the fourteenth century, occurred fifty- 

 times. Since then, this disease has destroyed 300,000 in one 

 century, and in all about 900,000,000, and it has increased as 

 Austrian and Hungarian troops moved westward. It is similar to 

 small pox, but differs from pleura pneumonia. It was first des- 

 cribed a hundred years ago. There is a diminution of appetite, a 

 slight aversion to green food, next to all kind of food, which is on 

 the third day: when a cow, it ceases to chew the cud, there is a 

 decrease of milk, the looks are depressed, the ears are col^l, there 

 is increased pulse, the gums of the lower jaw, in particular, are 

 livid, a mucus flow^s from the eyes and nostrils, mixed with flakes, 

 which coagulates. 



The disease is contagious, and is due to a specific material sub- 

 stonce like the virus of small pox, but more malignant, and which 

 the microscope discovers. Dogs, sheep, and even hens, searching 

 for grain, transmit the poison; an attendant carries it in his 

 clothes and even in his hair; water channels, and running stream, 

 and even the public road on which infected cattle are driven, are 

 vehicles for this virus. A single Hungarian ox spread this plague 

 first, into all parts of Italy, then into France, England, and 

 ■western Germany. No other disease kills so many; generally 60 

 per cent die, l)Ut in England the mortality was 90 per cent. On 

 some English farms, where all the cattle were in sheds adjoining 

 each other, 97-| per cent of those attacked died. The only remedy, 

 till recently, was to slaughter, and then completely bury the car- 

 case. In this way Prussia remorselessly has stamped it out. 

 This virus has been kept for months, and been made active by 

 vaccination. Now, the first cases of vaccination generally are 

 fatal, but it lessens as it passes from one to another, till finally, it 

 disappears in the fourteenth subject. 



Dr. Brown then showed diagrams of the virus enlarged 2,800 

 times, which almost opened the wonders of the invisible world. 



There is no remedy, but a preventive, which is pure carbolic 

 acid, freel}^ cast or sprinkled about the abodes of the cattle. 

 Carbolic acid destroys the contagious particles. Prevention 1)y 

 vaccination refers to the steppe oxen only. This virus is not to be 

 confounded either with infusoria or animalcula?; nor has it any 

 analogy to the "ferments." It is active, or living, in the sense of 

 multiplying by division, and is the highest and most deadly type 

 of contao-ious or infectious matter. 



It was also moved and voted that Dr. Brown be invited, at 



