History of Animal Plagues. 131 



May, thus describes it : '^ I am able to bear witness, that, in the 

 year 1682, the ignea pestllcnt'ia raged among the cattle in the 

 country of Groningen, for in that year I happened to be living 

 there; and it was said that this deadly fire was first kindled in 

 Italy. Then it crept into Burgundy, and spread over the whole 

 of Switzerland, Germany, and Brabant, and in its course, in the 

 month of May, it attacked the cattle in the district of Gronin- 

 gen, where it continued up to the end of the year; and if I am 

 not deceived, in the following year it held its course as far as 

 Friesland. The disease was a fiery burning, and the cattle suf- 

 fered from inflamed pustules on the tongue, and not until great 

 havoc had been created was any remedy found. The following 

 treatment proved efi'ective. Sharp and jagged silver instru- 

 ments were used to scrape the tongues of the sick animals 

 until they were raw and bleeding. In this way art over- 

 came disease.^ ^ Dr Winder, chief physician to the Prince 

 Palatine, and who wrote from the Rhine in December, 1682, 

 to his friend Dr Slare, gives a very lucid account of its com- 

 mencement and progress. ' In 1682, on the borders of Italy, a 

 murrain infected the cattle, which spread into Switzerland, the 

 territories of Wurtemburg, and other provinces, making great 

 destruction among the cattle. The contagion seemed to projia- 

 gate itself in the form of a blue mist," which fell upon those 



^ Out/tovii. Judicia Jehovse. Groningen, 1721, p. 740. 



^ The influence of a ' mist ' in the production of disease, either in the animal or • 

 vegetable ivingdoms, has, from the earliest times, been looked upon as a certainly. 

 This history of epizootics will testify to some of these instances, in relation to the 

 plagues of the lower animals, but more numerous examples will perhaps be found 

 in the narratives of epidemic invasions. We constantly read in the ancient records ' 

 of atmospherical perturbations either preceding or accompanying severe pestilential ,' 

 visitations. 'On the island of Cyprus, before the earthquake, a pestiferous wind \ 

 spread so poisonous an odour, tliat many, l)cing overpowered liy it, fell down sud- 

 denly and expired in dreadful agonies. A thick stinking mist advanced from the 

 east, and spread itself over Italy.' This was previous to the Black Death, and 

 Ilecker remarks that the German accounts make particular mention, with regard to ) 

 that infliction, of a 'thick stinking mist which advanced from the east and spread 

 over Italy ; there could be no deception in so palpable a phenomenon.' The Abbe 

 Hue, a Jesuit missionary, who travelled much in China, gives a curious and strik- 

 ing description, gathered from the Chinese, of a 'mist' seen in the ]irovince of 

 Shantung, north China, which proved to be a precursor of cholera. — llie Chinese 

 Empire, p. 286. 



The invasions of cholera in this country have been similarly heralded or 



