HISTORY. 19 



havoc, resulting maiDly from a neglect to establish, as has 

 been shown in the preliminary report, eflBcient sanitary 

 cordons. 



It is conceded that it is by no means an easy task to trace 

 with exactitude the subtle course of a pestilence which thus 

 dashed with rapid and fatal strides through the herds of 

 Great Britain as it had previously held on in its mad career 

 on the Continent. I^or less difiicult does it seem to arrange 

 and classify the various statements given as to the mediate 

 instrumentalities of its spread. Too much concurrent testi- 

 mony exists, however, of the poison being carried on the 

 persons and clothes of attendants, diffused by excretions from 

 the mucous surface, the skin and the bowels of diseased 

 subjects ; sometimes caught upon the wings of birds or cling- 

 ing to their claws, so that falling plumes or alighting tracks 

 might contaminate green pastures or farmsteads kept scrupu- 

 lously clean — to cast a prudent doubt upon what would seem 

 to partake only of the marvelous and fanciful. Proof may be 

 deficient to show that in many cases the pest has been com- 

 municated, as some have aflSrmed, through the antennae of 

 flies crowding together on the glairy mucus exuding from 

 eyes, nostrils or vagina ; or conveyed on the hair or feet of 

 horses, cattle or dogs beyond the limits of developed conta- 

 gion ; or by like secondary agencies, and to a locality suf- 

 ficiently remote, for its spread by gradual or ordinary diflfusiou. 

 Yet it is asserted on evidence seemingly beyond impeach- 

 ment, to wit, on the statement of the Governor of Silesia 

 to Prof. Simonds (1st Eep., p. 3), that the outbreak in that 

 province occurred in consequence of a carpenter's passing 

 surreiJtitiously the frontier cordon from Galicia, in order to 

 visit his father, and incautiously mending a manger in the 

 cow sheds; thus communicating the seeds of the disease, 

 which in a few days broke out in what had been prior to 

 that time a perfecty healthy district.* 



* Gamgee was assured that a common cause of wide-spread outbreaks, was the practice of 

 calling priests and people together, to pray in the cattle sheds, that the plague might be stayed, 

 and the assembled people moving thence from farm to farm. He also quotes the authority of 

 Vicq d' Aztr, as to the infection of the 18th century, to show that where clothes of attendants 

 on diseased cattle were placed on healthy ones, three animals out of iix would be seized with 

 the disease. (Cattle Plague, p. 37.) 



