THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 7 



and susceptible stock, disinfection often ensued. Hence it was that 

 whereas in the intervals between extensive wars the arable lands were 

 to a large extent freed from this pestilence, the unfenced and unculti- 

 vated mountains, and the open commons, the property of the different 

 towns and cities, remained the centers of infection. This digression 

 seems necessary to explain what remains of this history, and to account 

 for the persistence of the disease in certain localities in the United 

 States. 



Franche-Comte", which was at this time the constant home of the 

 plague, was situated between the Jura and Vosges mountains, and par- 

 took of both, so that it was constantly liable to infection from these con- 

 taminated regions. Lafosse asserts that from 1769 to 1789 lung plague 

 was almost exclusively confined to the mountains of Switzerland, of 

 Jura, of Dauphiny, of Vosges, of Piedmont, and of Upper Silesia ; but 

 that, it spread widely on the plains of the different countries in connec- 

 tion with the wars of the French Revolution. Delafond adds Hesse 

 and Swabia, and Zundel the mountains of Auvergno and the Tyrol, to 

 the countries where the plague habitually prevailed prior to this date. 

 Swabia was specially favorable to such unbroken infection, because of 

 the unfenced territory of the Swabian Alps, while Hesse was exposed 

 through the Yogel Mountains and extensive forests like the Thuringer 

 AVald. AVe have the further testimony of Huzard, Ohabert, and Vicq 

 d'Azyr that the disease ravaged Paris and neighborhood from 1772 to 

 1794. Here the constant influx of strange cattle to supply the food of 

 a large city, the endless changes in city dairy herds, and the presence 

 of large parks and commons, sufficiently account for its perpetuation. 

 This prevalence of the pestilence in the genial atmosphere of Paris 

 sufficiently disproves the idea that the affection was kept up by the 

 inclemency of the hills. This conclusion becomes absolute, however, 

 when we add that this plague has never penetrated to the coldest and 

 most exposed of the European mountains, which are, however, protected 

 by situation alike from becoming the theater of great wars and the 

 channels of cattle traffic. Among those which maintain this enviable 

 immunity are the Pyrenees, the mountains of Norway and Sweden, and 

 the Highlands of Scotland. 



EXTENSION DUE TO THE WARS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND' 



EMPIRE. 



The above-mentioned statement of Lafosse relative to the general 

 infection of Europe in connection with the French Kevolution is fully 

 indorsed by other writers. Zundel says : 



Under the republic and the first empire, peri-pneumonia is to be counted among the 

 miseries entailed by the war, and we tind it not only in Switzerland, but in the different 

 departments of France, Italy, and Germany. We may name particularly the years 

 1812-'15, when the affection was very prevalent in these countries; 1816-'18, when it 

 attained an extraordinary intensity in the Tyrol, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria, and 

 Styria ; and 1820-'22, when it ravaged severely Switzerland, Piedmont, Franche-Comte', 

 Lyonnais, and Auvergne. 



The culmination of the ravages of the plague in 1S12-'15 is fully ex- 

 plained by the considerations that for a quarter of a century, dating 

 from the French Ee volution in 1789, Europe had been the theater of an 

 almost uninterrupted warfare, which led to the movements of infected 

 cattle in every direction in the train of the different armies, and to the 

 infection of the countries in which the latter operated. Finally, this 

 reached its acme in 1812, in connection with Napoleon's ill-fated expe- 



