GENERAL PATHOLOGY. 59 



that our ADglo-Saxon ancestry were not free in remote 

 periods from an outbreak of pestilence among their stock. 



In an appendix to a posthumous work on diseases of cat- 

 tle and their cure, by J. Eowlin, a veterinary surgeon of con- 

 siderable eminence, a century ago; an account is given of this 

 distemper, in which the one of 1745 is distinguished from the 

 one of 1765 : the common external sign of the former being 

 *' Motclies arising all over the body," and of the latter the 

 symptoms *'in the roots of the tongue or glandular parts of 

 the throat." The one is also described as an emphysema^ or a 

 flatulent crackling swelling, attended with a mortifying 'blaclz- 

 ness. In the other the primary symptoms are said to be evi- 

 dent " by the mouth being generally open, and a matter fall- 

 ing therefrom ; by opening the mouth you will find on one or 

 both sides of the tongue a large MacMsli colored substance, 

 which will easily yield to the pressure of your finger." 



In fine, if, we undertake to separate from any authentic 

 list of the symptoms and morbid appearances of the mur- 

 rains which scourged the continent as well as England in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; in the first instance, 

 those which are peculiar to and accompany all deadly dis- 

 tempers of cattle ; and next those which indicate primary and 

 idiopathic affections of the lungs, or constitute the invariable 

 signs of catarrhal fever ; what is there left on which to base 

 any diagnosis of a malady which, in its uncomplicated form, 

 does not touch a single serous surface, does not of necessity 

 involve the thoracic organs, but leaves its stamp solely on 

 the mucous vestment? Where, at any rate, to take the most 

 apparent indications, as tests even for untutored minds, where 

 is the simple epithelial denudation of the mouth ? where the 

 characteristic redness and aphthae of the vulva ? 



We insist, in the behalf of science, which sooner or later 

 has modified, if not curbed, the fatal march of pestilence, 

 that indistinct views and crude generalizations on this pest, 

 or its theoretical pathology, should be banished at once from 

 the field of observation ; and that facts, indisputable in them- 

 selves and arranged according to the methods of scientific 

 induction, should alone guide all future investigation as to 



