84 History of Animal Plagues. 



turalist/ that the variolous disease owed its origin to the turkey 

 [Meleagris gallopavo). a bird only imported into Europe by the 

 Spaniards in 1530^ nearly five-hundred years after it is mention- 

 ed as a known disease, and two hundred after Chaucer distinctly 

 alludes to it; as well as three hundred after a probable outbreak 

 in Ensjland, due to the importation of a diseased Spanish sheep, 

 and which lasted for twenty-eight years. Besides, the disease 

 (like cow-pox ? -) has never, to my knowledge, been seen in 

 Mexico, the native country of the turkey. 



Much mystery attends the early history of human variola in 

 Europe. We have already seen that in a.d. 569 the word 

 variola was employed to designate an epidemic in Italy and 

 France; the malady certainly appears to have been sufficiently 

 specified towards the end of the sixth century under the de- 

 signations of lues cum vesicis pusulce or pustulce, and morbus dy- 

 sentericus cum pustulis, as well as coralis. Gregory of Tours 

 says : Rusticiores vero corales has pustulas nominahant ; and in 

 A.D. 772 the pox (small-pox) is reported to have raged over 

 the whole of Ireland. Rhazes, or Razi, an Arab physician, 

 accurately described the disease in a special monograph, about 

 the year 900; and Dr Short, an excellent medical historian, ap- 

 pears to believe that the malady was one of ancient date in 

 Europe, but had not attracted much attention because of the 

 mild form it exhibited. 'The small-pox seem not to have been 

 so severe and fatal formerly as in late acres, since the ancients do 

 not treat of them particularly ; but are thought to intend them 

 under such general names as some think sufficient to express 

 their nature, as papulas, Jilius ignis, carhones adustos, pustulas 

 latas sublimes nigras, iilcerosas caput cutemque puerorum occu- 

 pare ; exanthemata eithymata multa et varia exercere, &c. The 

 Arabians first treated of them professedly, and they always joined 

 them to the plague and pestilential fevers ; but neither Greeks, 

 Latins, nor Arabians tell us when they first begiui : probably be- 

 cause they were long before their days, but not being so fatal as 



1 Bnffon. Hist. Nat. du Diiidon. 



* For evidence with rej,'ard to the probable existence of cow-pox among tlie 

 cattle of South America from tlie earliest times, see Humboldt, Essai Politique sur 

 la Royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, vol. i. p. 67. 



