Introduction. xxiii 



calamities which befell men, enunciated a truthful saying, when draw- 

 ing a comparison between the lord of the creation and his less favoured 

 companions, and which may have had reference to their suffering alike 

 from plagues : ' For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth 

 beasts j even one thing befalleth them : as the one dieth, so dieth the 

 other ; yea, they have all one breath j so that a man hath no pre- 

 eminence above a beast.' ' 



To a people like the primitive Jews, next to a pestilence appearing 

 among themselves, was a plague among their herds and flocks. ' Blessed, ' 

 says Moses, ' shalt thou be in the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy 

 kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.' - And a curse from the Almighty was 

 imagined to be the cause when the health of their cattle and sheep was 

 blighted by sudden disease and death. The Egyptians were told, in the 

 lirst plague which history mentions, that because they would not listen 

 to Moses, or believe in his mission, ' Behold, the hand of the Lord is 

 upon thy cattle which is in the tield, upon the horses, upon the asses, 

 upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep : there shall be a 

 very grievous murrain.' ^ The displeasure of the Creator was the ever- 

 present cause; agencies of a physical nature were left unnoticed, 

 and doubtless ' murrains ' must have been frequent, general, and most 

 severe, when the real exciting or predisposing causes were thus allowed 

 to prevail unchecked. 



The most striking examples of rampant superstition and gross 

 ignorance meet us at nearly every step in our investigation into the 

 history of animal plagues; and one is puzzled whether to lay most 

 blame on those who led ignorant people astray, or on the people who 

 could be so credulous and short-sighted as to be guided and ruined by 

 designing or infatuated men. In the early Christian ages, the sign of the 

 cross was burnt with a hot iron on the heads of menaced or already in- 

 fected flocks, or their bodies were anointed with the oil and water from 

 the lamps of some church in which reposed the musty bones of some 

 saint or other ; or at other times rows of such relics were lauded by the 

 priests as efficacious remedies ; while all the time the diseases — their 

 causes, nature, and distinctive characteristics — were entirely neglected by 

 the gullible priest-ridden people, until they were all but ruined, as is 

 apparent in almost every page of the history of these visitations in the 

 early and middle ages. 



And the obstructive ideas which then prevailed have not even yet 

 abated much in their rancour in many parts of the world. A disj)leased 



' Ecclcs. ill. 19. 2 Deut. xxviii. 4. ^ Exod. ix. 3. 



