42 EINDERPEST. 



fact that veterinary diagnosis is now happily so far advanced 

 that it rarely happens that the Pest is now, as it has been, 

 identified with or mistaken for the following epizootics which 

 have obtained a foothold on the continent and in England, 

 to wit : Eczema-epizootica (mouth and foot rot), or pleuro- 

 pneumonia-typhoica, or (by some writers styled) exudativa ; 

 (contagious pleuro-pneumonia).* 



Moreover, the terror which epizootics as well as epidemics 

 excite in a community where their extraordinary havoc is 

 witnessed from hour to hour, indisposes even the most heroic 

 to those patient modes of investigation, which can alone 

 clearly define the nature and scope of the pestilence, and 

 secure its ultimate mastery by remedial agencies. 



Hence, we have the vaguest notions of most of those epi- 

 zootics which have scourged the continent and Great Britain 

 for many centuries. The murrains in the latter, of 1348-9, 

 1480 and 1665, have left behind theni but little note of 

 anything but their fatality and rude attempts at sanitary 

 regulation. Those, however, which were developed in the 

 eighteenth century, had the advantage of no inconsiderable 

 skill in their investigation. And we cannot but express our 

 reluctance to state, that the Eoyal Commission have given 

 the sanction of their high authority to the indorsement of the 

 opinion, that the Einderpest is identical with the murrains of 

 1714 and 1745. As there exists sufiQciently accurate descrip- 

 tions of the morbid anatomy of these distempers, and as the 

 question of identity is of importance, not only as a matter of 

 history but of diagnosis and therapeutics, we shall offer no 

 apology for the space devoted to the review of post-mortem 

 and other examinations, made during their prevalence, which, 

 as we think, clearly demonstrate a total want of identity. 

 Perhaps, however, we ought to acknowledge two common 

 facts in the epizootics of 1714 and 1865. Each first made its 

 appearance at Islington, and about the middle of July. 



• We may regret that the latter disease, Imported a few years since flpom Holland Into Mass** 

 chasetts, was regarded, in terms at least, as mere pleuro-pneumonia, which is enzo<)tic or spo- 

 radic. The pneumonia which effected no inconsiderable loss, and threatened an extended alarm 

 throughout this country, was finally put at bay, and is now understood and recognized as typhoid 

 in its distinctive character. 



