History of Animal Plagues. 139 



A.D. 1599. Plague ill mankind in various parts of the 

 world, but especially in France and Upper Italy. To this was 

 added, in Italy, disease in cattle, which destroyed more than 

 thirteen thousand beasts.^ 'There is a certain manuscript, 

 which is worthy of credence, in which Antonius Faccius says, 

 that in the ninety-ninth year of that age in which Fracastorius 

 lived, so grievous a plague attacked the oxen, that the Senate 

 was bound to issue edicts to the public, to the efl'ect that no 

 flesh of oxen, no cheese lately made, no butter, nor yet milk, 

 should be sold in the State under pain of death ; but that nuit- 

 ton alone should be eaten.'" ' A plague among cattle and goats 

 in Italy, and by them communicated to other animals.'^ 



An epidemic of dysentery in Venice and Padua was the 

 cause of the above order, which gave rise to a great contention 

 between the inhabitants and the butchers. The disease among 

 the cattle was supposed to have been imported from Hungary. 

 It may here be remarked, that the cities of Venice and Padua 

 had, from time immemorial, drawn their supplies of cattle from 

 Hungary and Dalniatia, and so severely and frequently did they 

 sufier from epizootic diseases, that at a later period they were 

 compelled to renounce this source of supply. Wirth, however, 

 as usual, classes the disease amongst the animals as one of an 

 anthracoid character.* 



A.D. 1603. Very inclement season in London, and a pestil- 

 ence among mankind which was supposed to have been intro- 

 duced from the Low Countries. A famine prevailed, and ex- 

 tensive disease amongst all animals, but ])articularly cattle. 

 Even dogs suffered greatly. 



A.D. 1604. In October great floods in England and Wales, 

 which destroyed cattle and everything else in the marshy coun- 

 try. Rabies canina was epizootic in Paris, and caused great 

 alarm.^ 



A.D. 1609. A plague in Mcmmingcn from July to Decem- 

 ber, killing a number of people. From December, an cpizooty 



' Palladia. Storiade Friuli, vol. ii. j). 235. 



"^ Ramazzini. De Contag. Epid. Bourn, 0pp. Genev. p. 794- 



3 Cole. Quoted by Dr Short, p. 287. ^ Op. cit., p. 85. 



5 Journal dc Henri IV., vol. iii. p. 221. 



