46 RINDERPEST, 



epizootic of 1745, as to the opinions prevalent at that time 

 (and quoted by Layard from Dr. Mortimer) on the origin 

 of the disease, whether brought by imported calves from Hol- 

 land, or by distempered hides from Zealand ; but he seems 

 latterly to have overlooked the pathology of the disease as 

 described by Dr. Layard. 



This learned physician inclines to the opinion that the 

 distemper of which he so elaborately wrote was similar 

 to that visited upon the obdurate Pharaoh, 1,600 years 

 B. 0., which resulted in the destruction of all the cattle 

 in the fields ; horses, asses, camels, oxen and sheep, by 

 a very grievous murrain, " hoils breaking forth with Mains 

 upon man and beast." Adverting to the great plague which, 

 after destroying, in the days of Eomulus, the fruits of the 

 earth and cattle, swept off many of the Romans and Lau- 

 rentes ; quoting Livy, who identifies the disease as equally 

 affecting men and brutes ; a recurrence of which took place 

 A. U. G. 355 ; Layard passes to the authority of Columella, 

 Gesner and Aldrovandus, who described the disease as a 

 subcutaneous disease ; makes it a plague of the same kind 

 which destroyed "every head of cattle in Gharlemagne*s 



army, also throughout all his dominions ;" and rallying 



upon the account given by Rammazini of the distemper in 

 Germany and Italy in 1514 and 1599, winds up with this 

 general expression of his historical survey : 



" The same countries which breed the plague and small-pox seem 

 to have propagated this contagion. The autumnal heats in Asia or 

 Africa, the putrid effluvia from the Nile, or from corrupted, stagnating 

 waters, are sufficient to contaminate the blood and juices of the 

 cattle." (Page 13.) 



This presents, it is true, a theory of the identity of cattle 

 murrains through all historic periods. As a generalization 

 broader in its grasp than the one we are combating, we shall 

 leave it to rest upon the evidence it brings from the records 

 upon which it relies ; or the imaginative skill with which the 

 eloquent Doctor has grounded this universal pestilence on 

 its eflauvial origin. The pathology of that which he saw, 

 is more to our present purpose. After describing the usual 



