148 History of Animal Plagues. 



heaps; the remainder took their flight northward and molested 

 other places.^ 



A.D. 1 67 1 -2. An extensive exanthematous epizooty among 

 cats in Westphalia. ' The head was covered with scabies, and 

 at first the ears were inwardly crusted with scaly matter. The 

 eves seemed as if they were covered with a film, although the 

 animals could see until suppuration took place; after this period 

 they died. Sleep continually oppressed them; and so drowsy were 

 they, that they appeared as if they had heard that celebrated 

 speech on the joys of sleep after dinner. The skin disease did 

 not proceed further than the head and neck. There was scarcely 

 a house in which some were not infected; and unless common 

 rumour be false, it seemed that it could be communicated from 

 one to another, as well as generated spontaneously. As a proof 

 of this, it attacked some which were closely shut up, so that they 

 might be free from all contagion from the diseased. Some are 

 supposed to have been cured by the fat of a whale; in the case 

 of most, however, medicine was of no avail, and few survived. •* ^ 

 In this year small-pox again appeared amongst sheep in the 

 Venetian states.^ 



A.D. 1674. Small-pox in sheep again in the Venetian territory. 

 In Seeland, the largest of the Danish islands, ' rot ' in sheep, and 

 the customary fluke [distoma hepatica) found not only in the 

 livers of these animals, but in those of other domesticated and 

 wild creatures. Willius gives the following observations : ^ All 

 the race of oxen sickened. A languor seized their whole body, 

 their breathing was short and rapid; they had a frequent hack- 

 ing cough. They ate as usual, bred, and grew fat. The fatness 

 was in every part of the body most extraordinary, bat the flesh 

 was very flaccid. The lungs were filled with innumerable 

 hydatid cysts, some of which were the size of two fists. On the 

 exterior of the lungs of one cow I reckoned seventeen, but they 

 lay so thick within, that they would not admit of being counted. 

 The whole of the thorax was filled with reddish serum ; the 

 vessels of the heart were enveloped in copious fat; in the peri- 

 cardium a liquid, similar to that observed in the chest, was 



^ dark. Examples. T. Short. P. 353. 

 2 Wedlius. Miscel. Nat. Curios., Dec. i. ^ Bottani. Loc. cit. 



