GENERAL PATHOLOGY. 45 



nicated in very many cases by fomites (the clotMng of 

 attendants, &c.); physiologists, we believe, will find little 

 resemblance between the symptoms and dissections of this 

 distemper of 1714 and those of the Einderpest. Neither do 

 we think that the Pest can be identified with the epizootic,* 

 which ravaged parts of the continent from 1744 to 1772 ; and 

 England from 1745 to 1757 (again breaking out in 1765) ; 

 although Professor Simonds, a very high authority, seem- 

 ingly abandoning the position taken in his report made in 

 1857, to the National Agricultural Societies of Great Britain, 

 on the plague which was then very fatal in Eastern Europe ; 

 has in his evidence before the Eoyal Commission of 1865 (1st 

 Eeport, p. 2, § 16) stated that the plague of 1745 was the 

 same as that at present existing in England. 



Professor Simonds in his Eeport,t speaking of the murrain 

 of 1714, says : 



"It appears, however, that the malady possessed many of the 

 features of JEczema epizootica^ now common in this country, and it 

 may possibly have been identical with this disease. The infection 

 seems to have been communicated by the saliva, as it is said that 

 " when this is dropped on the grass, and sound animals are immedi- 

 ately placed in the same pasture, they contract the disease, and in 

 some bullocks the tongue was inflamed and covered with many red 

 blisters." 



And, again alluding to the singular exemption which 

 Great Britain enjoyed after the subsidence of the latter 

 epizootic, until August, 1859, mentions the great anxiety 

 which was created by — 



" The sudden and almost simultaneous appearance of a " new affec- 

 tion" (although probably of the same nature as that of 1713-14), 

 amongst the cattle in different parts of the country, popularly known 

 as the mouth and foot disease." 



The Professor also refers to Dr. Layard's Essay| on the 



* There were destroyed in Western Europe from 1711-14, one and a half millions of cattle, and 

 from 1745-8, three millions in Western and Central Europe. These statements are believed not 

 to have buen exaggerated by the foreign authors who furnish these statistics, giving as the loss 

 of Denmark, from 1745-9, 280,000 head, and of Holland, from 1769-72, 395,000 head. 



t See Journal of Royal Agricultural Society, Vol. xviii, pp. 197 and 200. 



X See an essay on the nature, causes and cure of the contagious distemper among the horned 

 cattle in these kingdoms, by Daniel Peter Latakd, M. D., Mem. Roy. Coll. of Physicians, and 

 of the Royal Society, 1757. 



