14 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



tioii, whit'li passes into gangrene, or at other times into abscess and ends 

 in a true marasmus. "It is very wonderful," lie adds, "that among 

 the many modern physicians Avho have written ou^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 lungs." Haller determined 

 its cause and said, "o/vore all, ice must abandon all liope that the lung 

 disease is not a contaffions disease. ***** At all events, it is 

 certain that in our land, as often as the lung plague has appeared 

 among cattle, the origin of the disease has always been traced to the 

 purchase of an animal from a suspected market, or to one brought 

 from an infected district into our land. At other times our country 

 people have fattened cattle with other cattle from infected parts," 



It is hard to trace the course of a disease during periods when little 

 attention was paid to comparative pathology. From 1774 to 177G the 

 lung plague prevailed in Istria and Dalmatia.* Epizootic aphtha? made 

 steady inroads from eastern Europe into Austria and other parts of the 

 continent. From 1778 to 1781 pleuro-pneumonia, no doubt very common 

 in many countries, is specially referred to by Kauset and Orus as in 

 Silesia and Istria. Its coiu'se during this and subsequent periods was 

 involved in much obscurity, owing to the more alarming outbreaks of 

 rinderpest, which absorbed the attention of scientific men, and also 

 tended, by the wholesale and rapid destruction of herds, to supersede the 

 more insidious pleuro-pneumonia. Huzard and Vicq d'Azyr studied the 

 malady in 1791, and report that in the years 1772, 1776, 1780, 1787, 

 1789, 1791, and 1792 it raged among the milch cows of Paris and its 

 neighborhood. Chabert described the malady in 1793, and recognized 

 its contagious character, cautioning people against placing healthy 

 cattle in communication with sick ones. loggia at that time studied 

 the malady in Italy, and it prevailed in Baden during the years 1787, 

 1788, 1792, 1791, and 1798. It is to be regretted that little or nothing 

 was known of this disease, which no doubt prevailed in Eussia during 

 the last century ; and we are left to draw our own inference as to its 

 prol)able prevalence there, from indications of its introduction through 

 Poland to Prussia, but more frequently into Austria, Wurtemberg, 

 Switzerland, into northern Italy and France. 



Records of outbreaks during the present century are more satisfac- 

 tory. Boganus studied the nudady in Lithuania, and Jeueu firsjb saAV 

 it in Kussia in 1821. Ilaupt witnessed it repeatedly in Siberia, and 

 Busse observed it in the neighborhood of St. Petersburg in 1813, 1811, 

 1845, and 1850. 



The nmlady invaded Prussia from 1802 to 1810, and was described by 

 Sick in llud(>li>hi's Ohscrvaticms in Natural History and Medicine, 

 ])ublishe(l in Uerlin, in ISOl. Dieterichs witnessed it from 1815 to 1820, 

 and Nogenfeld published in his work on the disease, official reports of 



*A I'liiiti, sopiii I'opizooy.iiX hoviiui ill iilnini lui>nlii di-lla Dahuazia. Moilciia, 1776. 

 HciJ.singiT also (iiiotcs nu'iaoirs of Orus and Lntti. 



