THE LUmJ PLAGUE. 5 



I am disposed to favor, as a popular name, that of &quot;lung plague,&quot; in order to avoid 

 any confusion with sporadic and non-contagious affections of the chest. Many years ago 

 Mr. Sarginson, of Westmoreland, England, spoke of it as an epizootic influenza among 

 cattle, #nd Mr. Barlow, afterward a much respected professor in the Edinburgh Veterin 

 ary College, was among the first to draw attention to the disease under the head epizootic 

 pleuropneumonia. 



HISTORY OF THE LUNG PLAGUE. 



Ancient traditions and imperfect records rather tend to bewilder those who, from the 

 inferences warranted by a complete knowledge of recent events, are anxious to place before 

 the world evidence of the laws of nature having been immutable from time immemorial. 

 Our ideas of creation, and the facts bearing on the origin of all things, are too meager to 

 warrant us in being confident of our interpretations of the past ; and yet glimpses of light 

 seem to promise a better understanding of even antediluvian phenomena in almost every 

 branch of natural history. 



The assertion that plagues known now to be propagated alone by contagion have thus 

 been transmitted from the remotest antiquity, is usually met by objectors with the declara 

 tion that the first case must have developad spontaneously. Professor Haubncr, of Dres 

 den,* accepting the proposition, says : &quot;It is correct that the lung plague was once devel 

 oped spontaneously, for no one can suppose that Noah had it with him in the ark.&quot; But 

 we can point to a contagious disease, scab in sheep, which, if the words of the Bible are 

 to be accepted, indicate the preservation of the scab insect. It is not my desire to enter 

 on discussions which have no direct practical bearing, and I shall dismiss the objections of 

 those who spare themselves the labor of inquiry after positive truth, by declaring that, so 

 far as science has yet taught us, the great law, that like produces like, operates in the 

 increase of certain animal poisons or forms of specific virus, just as in the case of other 

 living entities whose reproduction is undoubted. Spontaneous generation the theory of 

 development by an accidental cohesion and vivifying of inert matter ably as it has been 

 defended up to the present day, is fast passing into oblivion. We are, and must probably 

 remain, in ignorance of that final cause which once molded and gave life to all that is 

 living. All that is living, however, owes that life to parents, and such has been the case 

 ever since the globe became inhabited ; and there are no facts to indicate that one form of 

 living matter grew out of another, and a totally different, form, or that there were successive 

 stages in the creation of animals or parts of animals. Animal poisons are known to us, 

 it is true, only as parts of animals. They arc undistinguishablc except from the results 

 produced by them on the creatures they infest, and yet they are as foreign to them as the 

 countless parasites that are only known to us as abiding in the living tissues of living 

 beings. Indeed, animal poisons may be regarded as parasitic productions, and their dif 

 ference from the more apparent types of organized entities may be due more to imperfect 

 means of observation than to actual diversity. 



Efforts are, indeed, being made to demonstrate the vegetable origin of many animal 

 poisons, and it is supposed by some that cryptogamic plants, fungi, &c., not only approach 



Die Entstehung uml Tilguug der Lungenseuche des Rimles, von Dr. Karl Haulmer, Leipzig, 1861. 



