126 History of Animal Plagues, 



as to the nature of the epizooties which have been enumerated. 

 All we can glean from the deep obscurity are the facts, that in 

 those centuries, as in later, the bovine species has been most 

 liable to attacks of fatal and wide-spread disease, possibly to some 

 extent from their peculiar temperament and phlegmatic consti- 

 tution; that very many of these bovine plagues could be traced to 

 the East, just as Pliny had traced the origin of the typhus or 

 putrid fever of man which appeared in Italy to the same quarter 

 long before ; that, usually, they were of brief duration, for the 

 very cood reason that they generally exterminated the whole of 

 the herds they attacked, and that speedily ; that the equine 

 species have been least affected by these visitations; and that 

 France and Germany were more frequently the ground of their 

 selection than other countries. 



Unfortunately, in the next period, we find veterinary medicine 

 nearly at a stand-still, but human medicine making rapid strides. 

 The consequence is, that while the more serious epizooties 

 have been studied bv physicians, who, we may surmise, had not 

 given comparative pathology their attention until called upon to 

 investigate these invasions of disease, much that is valuable 

 and of a practical nature has been overlooked. But there is 

 much more exactness in the symptoms described, and often we 

 have the history of the disease accurately traced from beginning 

 to end, with not unfrequently the effects of remedial measures. 

 Italy continued to be the chief, if not almost the sole, refuge for 

 veterinary science, and Naples was more particularly the great 

 school of equitation and animal medicine for the whole of Eu- 

 rope; though the writings of the Greek and Roman hippiatrists, 

 and those of RufTus and Rusius, were yet the text-books for 

 general reference. Towards the sixteenth, and during the seven- 

 teenth centuries, we have abundant evidence, from the numerous 

 treatises published on the continent and in this country, that 

 much attention was being directed to this branch of science; 

 but there was little originality or real progress; anatomy was 

 greatly neglected; and, altogether, veterinary was in a much less 

 satisfactory condition than human medicine. 



A.D. 1500. This century began with much inclemency of 

 weather, which caused great destruction to cattle, and was fol- 



