Introduction. xxv 



but carnal love of beef, for which the murrain was sent as a Divine 

 chastisement ; and more than one clergyman declared the infliction of 

 this painful malady on the creatures who had never sinned to be a 

 mark of the Almighty's anger at the laches of the nation. There was 

 no allusion, however, to the fact of such countries as Ireland or France, 

 which may have been equally sinful, evading the terrible punishment 

 by a little judicious care, and the exercise of that power and know- 

 ledge with which a benevolent, and not a malevolent. Creator, had en- 

 dowed them. Such doctrines are unworthy of Christians, and carry us 

 back to ages when the perpetration of the most atrocious crimes and 

 the cold-blooded slaughter of whole tribes of men, women, and children 

 were laid to the favour or disfavour of the God of mercy and love. 



On the Continent, St Cornelius and other saints of France, and St 

 Antonio of Rome and Italy in general, are the protectors of four-footed 

 creatures j and it is much less troublesome for their owners, and more 

 profitable to the priests, to obtain exemption from an approaching 

 plague through the merits of a mouldy saint than by the adoption 

 of onerous, heretical measures of a hygienic kind, which do not benefit 

 the Church. 



This blind superstition and infatuation, almost amounting to pro- 

 tanity, and which is incompatible with reason or true religion, is now 

 happily on the wanej but in ages gone by it has acted most prejudici- 

 ally, by diverting men's minds from the study of the nature and causes 

 of diseases of this class. For what need was there to investigate or 

 attempt to avert them, when they were sent from Heaven to j)unish 

 sinful man ? 



Chiefly for this reason, we are left much in want of positive in- 

 formation as to the character of the various epizootic diseases which 

 have appeared since history first began " to record them. As old as 

 animated nature itself, their beginning is lost hi the gloom of antiquity. 

 The ancients, often completely ignorant of veterinary science, have left 

 us but little information regarding them, for they seemed to dread 

 transmitting more than vague generalities to posterity ; and several of 

 the detailed accounts are those of poets, who, in describing some one of 

 tho.-je dreadful pests which spread far and wide, and caused fear and 

 desolation to prevail, have probably had poetical efl'ect more in view 

 than accuracy. 



Up to the i4tli or 15th centuries, we can identify but few of the 

 epizoiities mentioned as occurring in the preceding eras ; i'nr {\\v histori- 

 ans of the early, dark, and middle ages were men wlio were either un- 

 acquainted with the forms assumed by disease, and merely tell us of their 



