CATTLE PLAGUE. 143 



pox, scarlatina, pypemia, and other blood diseases. It is probable 

 that the diminution in the size of Peyer's patches in rinderpest, 

 as compared with the glands in a healthy ox, may be due in 

 part to the length of time that has elapsed since digestion has 

 been arrested, as it is well known that these glands are larger 

 and more developed during the digestive process than during 

 fasting. But, whatever be the cause, nothing can be greater than 

 the contrast between the appearance of these glands on the tenth 

 day of rinderpest and on the corresponding day of human enteric 

 fever. In the former case the glands have almost, if not entirely, 

 disappeared ; in the latter they are enormously prominent, owing 

 to abnormal deposit in and around the glandules." Dr. Mur- 

 chison quotes the writings of several observers, who agree 

 that the intestinal glands are not enlarged ; on the contrary, 

 that they are usually diminished in size, often covered over with 

 a layer of discoloured and softened mucous membrane." " Peyer's 

 , glands," says Professor Simonds, in his Eeport on the Cattle 

 Plague, published in the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, 

 1857, "are not invariably diseased; but like other follicular 

 openings of the digestive canal, they are often covered with 

 layers of lymph, beneath which ulceration is occasionally ob- 

 served, but more frequently the surface is healthy, although 

 tinged witli blood." After further comparing cattle plague with 

 typhus, influenza, dysentery, erysipelas, scarlatina, and variola, 

 Dr. Murchison concludes that cattle plague has no resemblance 

 to typhoid fever, typhus, scarlatina, erysipelas, influenza, or 

 dysentery, but that it resembles small-pox. 



The promulgation of this theory during the prevalence of the 

 plague in 1866 led to the belief that vaccination would prove a 

 preventive, and immediately cattle all over the country were 

 vaccinated, very much to the benefit of the vaccinators but not 

 of the cattle, for it proved a total failure ; except, indeed, that 

 it confirmed the view that rinderpest was not variola, but a 

 disease having some resemblance to cholera, scarlatina, and to 

 diphtheria, at the same time having characteristics of its own 

 which separate it from all other diseases, and prove it to be an 

 incurable and highly contagious malady, very properly denomi- 

 nated " the cattle plague." 



Mr. John Gamgee, in his work on the Cattle Plague, very 



