THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 5 



Russian cattle plague lour days, lor slurp-pox seven dnys, but for lung 

 plague thirty days. As the exigencies of war or commerce usually led 

 to the introduction into a new country of two or mow of these plagues 

 simultaneously, it is the exception rather than the rule to iind any clear 

 distinction drawn between them in these early days of medicine. Thus 

 the Iviissian cattle plague, which developed most speedily and proved the 

 most deadly, naturally came in for the greatest sh a re of attention, while 

 the lung plague, which appeared a mout h later and proved more slowly 

 though not less surely and ruinously destructive, was looked upon as the 

 dregs of the same disease, and thus we have usually a most confusing 

 medley of the two. Vouatt, whose works have been extensively read 

 in America, gives a striking illustration of this, confounding as he does 

 under the one name of "HitiliyiHint epidemic murrain" at least four dis- 

 eases, namely, malignant catarrh, rinderpest, malignant anthrax, and 

 lung plague/ By exercising special care one can disentangle these 

 records and show with reasonable certainty the existence of this malady 

 in early times. 



Aristotle, writing three hundred and fifty years before Christ, says: 

 'The cattle icli'icli lire in Jtrrds are- subject to a malady during which 

 the breathing becomes hot and frequent, the ears droop, and they refuse 

 to eat. They die speedily, and the lungs are found destroyed." Here 

 the restriction of the disease to cattle which lived in large herds, where 

 there was ample opportunity for a continuous succession of cases by the 

 infection of new and susceptible subjects, the confinement of the mor- 

 bid lesions to the lungs, and the high mortality, all strongly suggest the 

 lung plague. Tacitus and Columbia refer to an extended outbreak of 

 lung disease in cattle in the middle of the first Christian century. The 

 latter describes it as a "heavy mortality, with uleeration of the lungs, 

 cough, emaciation, and finally phthisis." As serving to identify this 

 with lung plague we have the facts that cattle only are named as its 

 victims, and that the epizootic attended and followed the great wars 

 for the extension of the Roman Republic and Empire. The lung plague 

 is con lined to cattle, and the great means of its propagation in all ages 

 have been the infected cattle in the commissariat parks, which moved 

 from place to place with the advancing or retreating armies. 



LUNG PLAGUE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. 



A pulmonary affection of cattle which prevailed in Hesse in 1695 is 

 thus described by Valentini: 



The preceding winter being wet, but in the end very frosty, was followed in 

 spring ly an unusual heat, which continued throughout the whole summer, which 

 sudden change brought about an unequal and unnatural motion of the humors and 

 breath. resulting in death to man and brute. Oxen and cows perished in great num- 

 bers. From the observation of those who opened the bodies it appeared that they 

 died of pulmonary phthisis, to which, doubtless, the severe cold and the succeeding 

 intense heat largely contributed. In man, also, it caused dysentery and malignant 

 fever: toward the end of June and the beginning of August this fever in places becom- 

 ing intermittent and mainly tertian. 



This was doubtless the genuine lung plague, for its extensive preva- 

 lence, its high mortality, and the fact that cattle only among domestic 

 animals are mentioned as the sufferers, forbids the conclusion that it 

 was due to the weather vicissitudes alone. The fact that the mortality 

 supervened in the hot weather is exactly in keeping with the habits of 

 the lung plague, the deadly effects of which^ire always greatly enhanced 

 by a hot season or climate. Had it been true pulmonary phthisis (tuber- 

 culosis), it would have been ameliorated, in place of aggravated, by the 



