I20 History of Animal Plagues. 



likewise attacked the lower animals, and was believed to be 

 infectious, for we read that 'Murtagh, the son of Art O'Melag- 

 lin, and his wife, daughter of O'Coffey, and three others besides, 

 died in one dav, from having seen a horse that had perished of 

 the same spasms.' ^ In another record it is stated that these people 

 died from looking ' at a horse which died of the same lumps; ' ^ 

 and another has it, ' it was -said that the occasion of their death 

 was their coming to see a horse that perished by some swelling 

 knobs.' ^ Might this not rather be anthrax or farcy which 

 affected the horse ? From the sudden death of the people men- 

 tioned, I think there is every probability of its being the former 

 contaoious maladv. 



A.D. 1473. ^" Ireland, ' a great destruction of cows [Bo-dhith] 

 this year/ * 



A.D. 1479. ' ^^^ ^^^'^ y^'^'' ^^^^ great mortality and death by 

 the pestilence, not only in London, but in divers parts of the 

 realm, which began in the latter end of September in the year 

 last before passed, and continued all this year till the beginning 

 of November, which was about fourteen months, in the which 

 space died innumerable of people in the said city and elsewhere.' ^ 



A.D. 1480. A murrain among cattle in England.*' The pre- 

 ceding summer had been very hot, and there was a great drought. 

 This year was very wet, and there were extensive inundations of 

 the Tiber, the Po, the Danube, the Rhine, and most of the other 

 great rivers. Famine and disease followed, from the destruction 

 of the crops and the saturation of the air with moisture.'' In 



' Annals of the Four Masters. ^ Annals of Connaught. 



^ Mac Firbis. Op. cit. * Annals of Connaught. 



^ HoUnshcd. Op. cit. 



" The Royal Commissioners in their First Report published in October, 1865, 

 think that this murrain, as well as that which appeared in 1348-9, was analogous 

 to, if not identical with, the Cattle Plague then devastating England. Of this I 

 cannot find the slightest proof, for the symptoms of diseases in these early times 

 are, except in rare instances, so obscurely enumerated, if at all, that we might as 

 well believe them to be eczema epizootica, epizootic dysentery, epizootic anthrax, 

 or any other likely malady. From the fact that almost every kind of animal was 

 attacked by disease during the Black Death, it seems exceedingly probable that the 

 panzootic malady was similar to that in man. I may add I am unable to find any 

 mention of this epizooty besides that in the report of the Commissioners, though I 

 have made diligent search for it. 



■^ Werlich. Chronica. Statt. Augsburg, p. 236. Spangenberg. Op. cit. 



