26 THE CONTAGIOUS TYPHUS 



physicians, who appear to have been scarcely 

 known, enlightened by the effects of the inocu- 

 lation of small-pox, then practised from man 

 to man, appear to have first conceived the idea, 

 now practised in Russia, of preventing the 

 propagation of the contagious cattle disease by 

 means of inoculation ; and we may raise the 

 interest of this remark by reminding the 

 reader that their experiments to inoculate 

 cattle were made in 1757, eight years after the 

 very year which gave birth to the future inocu- 

 lation of man with animal virus by the cele- 

 brated Jenner. By this it would appear that 

 the twofold honour of applying the method of 

 inoculation as both preventive and curative 

 means in respect of contagion in cattle, and fts 

 the preventive means by the variola of the cow 

 to resist the ravages of the small-pox in man, is 

 the indisputable claim of English physicians.* 



* To assist the researches of other inquirers on this 

 vital subject, now so generally interesting, we may add, 

 that the cattle treatises already referred to of Malcolm 

 Flemming and Peter Layard are to be found in the 

 Library of the British Museum, bound together in a 

 single volume, which is certainly worth ten times its 

 weight in gold. It contains, indeed, eight different 



