8 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



In 1686- 87 the foot and mouth disease.was noticed in Silesia, and other parts of 

 Eastern Europe. In 1695 Valentini described the coincident inflammation of the feet of 

 cattle and aphthfe in man.* And thus it established, beyond doubt, that the influences 

 operating in the transmission of contagious pleuropneumonia were at work then. Valen 

 tini committed the common error of attributing the lung plague to the weather, but his 

 reference to a wide-spread pulmonary disorder among cattle is sufficiently distinct to war 

 rant our dissenting from Delafond when lie says that nothing can authorize the conclu 

 sion that the disease described by Valentini was the pleuropneumonia which prevails to 

 day among horned cattle. 



Sauberg, whose prize essay on the lung plague is worthy of the highest praise, draws 

 attention to the fact that the propagation westward of the Russian murrain, at the com 

 mencement of the eighteenth century, directed the attention of the most learned naturalists 

 and physicians to the investigation of the plagues of animals, and thus a marked influence 

 was exerted in the development of veterinary science. 



Kanold, Steurlin, Ramazzini, Lancisi, Bates, Lanzoni, Sebroek, Fischer, Scheuchzer, 

 Bottoni, Muratori, Camper, Haller, and numerous others, have contributed to enrich the 

 science of comparative pathology by references to outbreaks of epizootic aphtha3, lung plague, 

 rinderpest, variolous fevers, carbuncular, and other diseases, which committed great havoc 

 up to the time that an illustrious Frenchman, Bourgelat, resolved to establish a college 

 for the education of veterinary surgeons. All references to the contagious pleuropneumo 

 nia are of little practical moment until we come to the labors of Bourgelat himself. He 

 did not, it is true as no one ever did on first studying this disease, recognize its con 

 tagious character. He met with it in Franche-Comte, where it had been known for years 

 under the name of &quot; murie.&quot; He described it as distinguished by a short dry cough, much 

 fever, great oppression, especially after an animal has eaten anything, loss of appetite, 

 fetor of breath, drynes.s of nose, and sometimes discharge of thick whitish matter from the 

 nostrils. His description of the pleuritic adhesions, the deposits of gelatinous layers of 

 different colors around the lungs, the lividity and engorgement of the lungs, and distension 

 of the chest by a reddish, frothy, sanious, or purulent liquid, is entirely satisfactory, and 

 indicates how much in advance of his times Bourgelat was in his description of this malady. 

 As there has been a disposition to revive the treatment of the lung plague by fumigations, 

 I may mention that, among other remedies, Bourgelat recommended acetic acid to be used 

 in this way. 



The malady which had thus stationed itself in France, had also established secure 

 hold in other parts of Europe, and we learn of its prevalence in 1743 in Zurich and the 

 adjacent cantons of Switzerland. It continued to invade that country by importations from 

 the grand duchy of Baden, and in 1773 the great physiologist, Haller, published the ablest 

 memoir on this disease that appeared during the eighteenth century .f He spoke of it as 

 a lung disease, beginning as an inflammation, which passes into gangrene, or at other times 

 into abscess and ends in a true marasmus. &quot; It is very wonderful,&quot; he adds, &quot; that among 

 the many modern physicians who have written on this plague, which has been observed so 

 generally and for so long, that they have not noticed the seat of the disease to be in the 



*Sub icquinoctio autumnali angiitito decrepito, iuflammatin gliifriva-rmn, liugiup ft oris in luiiiiiiiibnx, in brutia 

 veriiui pediun iiiflammationra, obscrvavi liinc intle. Loc. Cit. 



t AbhamUuiiK von dcr Viehseuche. Von Herrn Alb. Haller. Hern, 1773. 



