130 History of Animal Plagues. 



were visited by a malignant epidemic dysentery, from the people 

 having eaten the flesh of some diseased cattle that the butchers 

 had imported from Hungary. The squabble between the 

 butchers and the populace was serious. 



Forster^ and Webster^ mention an epizooty, or distemper/ 

 as having destroyed much cattle in England in this year. They 

 also notice an epizooty among cats in England, but unfortunately 

 they neither give their authorities, nor do they describe the 

 symptoms. 



A.D. 1515. There appeared this year in France, though it 

 had been noticed here and there since the commencement of the 

 century, a disease amongst sheep, which was contagious and 

 very dangerous. It was named fehris pestifera, vari nigri, or 

 more commonly the 'Tac;' a term, it seems, for a pestilential 

 disease which had appeared in the human species in 1411.^ 



Gesner, in his ' Historia Animalium,' makes mention of the 

 disease as scabies: ''Scabiem oviumGalli vocant Tcc.^ Ambrose 

 Pare * savs that the Tac usually appears in the pestilential fever 

 (of man), and sometimes before the tumours or carbuncles be- 

 come apparent : ' In some cases there are eruptions on the skin 

 similar to the bites of fleas or bugs; sometimes, also, there are 

 elevations like small millet-seeds or the small-pox of children. 



The vulgar call them the Tac,' &c. Belon, a learned 



physician, who wrote a work on medicine^ in the 16th century, 

 in speaking of the 'Tac' oil {hiiile de tac), says that this sub- 

 stance was so named because it was employed in the treatment 

 of a disease of that name, 'a pestilential disease which attacks 

 and kills sheep.' 'The peasantry of Celtic Gaul,' he further 

 observes, 'knowing better than we how to cure it, go to the 

 apothecaries and ask for the Tac, which is an empyreumatic oil, 

 obtained from juniper wood, and which is designated Cade Serbin 

 in the South of France, a name borrowed from the Jews.' In 

 Languedoc and other parts of France this oil is yet named 

 ' oli de cade.' 



The origin of the word appears to have been derived 



1 Forster. The Disorders of Health, p. 153. 



- N: Webster. Op. cit. 



3 Paulet. Op. cit., vol. i. p. 88. * Q^uvres ed. Malgaigne, vol. iii. p. 423. 



* Medicamentis Servandi Cadaveris Vini Obtinentibus. 



