12 RINDERPEST. 



tion to absorbent surfaces, by inoculation or the like, and 

 thus the disease may be not only infectious, but contagious 

 also.* 



We do not present this distinction as disposed to cope 

 with any of the vexed questions in the schools, but simply 

 (as the sequel will show the Einderpest to be capable of prop- 

 agation by both methods) to guard, in the case of this disease 

 at least, against the erroneous impression that it must be 

 communicable, if at all, in one way or the other, and cannot 

 be by both. Before, however, demonstrating that the great 

 variety of observed facts do not sustain any such delusive 

 view, it is desirable to trace the pest from its earliest appear- 

 ance to its present formidable development in Great Britain. 



I. HISTORY. 



The Rinderpest had its origin on the Asiatic part of the 

 steppes of Eussia, more, it is said, than one thousand years 

 ago, and in the times of Charles the Great. These steppes 

 (from the Eussian word "step," signifying a desert or dry 

 plain) are natural feeding grounds, not unlike the lands of 

 Guienne in France, the heaths of Northern Germany, and 

 in many respects like the prairies of the Great West. In 

 these steppes are now roving from eight to ten millions of 

 cattle, more than half being reserved for market as fat cattle. 

 Though the greater part of these immense ranges is more or 

 less arid, that portion of the Asiatic steppe between the 

 rivers Volga and Don is marshy and generally accounted to 

 be the local source of the infection. Be this as it may, no 

 part of the steppes, or it is said of Southern Eussia (and the 

 same may be aflfirmed of the Hungarian steppes, stretching 



 The absence of any verb in the English language corresponding to the term contagion 

 accounts for the use of the verb " infect," as indicative of the action of contagion as well as 

 infection; hence these terms are frequently used as synons'mous. Physiologists recognixe the 

 distinction aimed at in the text, though some using infection or contagion couvertibly, attempt 

 to make the necessary classification as immediate or mediate, contactual or remote. This may 

 serve for such diseases, on the one hand, as syphilis, ft-amboesia, lepra, Itch and the like, or for 

 diseases transmissible from the lower animals, as hydrophobia, and on the other hand, for influ- 

 enza, malarious or other fevers, &c. But it does not serve as well as the distinction in the text 

 for diseases whose poisonous principle la equally efficient, whether by immediate application to 

 the skin, Ac, or by absorption through the atmosphere ; as, for example, small-pox, hospital 

 gangrene, plague, &c., or of glanders, as an instance of transmissible disease. 



