History of Animal Plagues. 153 



this disease in our town's-cattle. It was called the "flvincr cancer'* 

 {Jiiegende krebs), and it travelled, in twenty-four hours, two 

 leagues in length by four miles in breadth/ ^ 



In August it was in Saxony, where it was observed that it 

 travelled at the above rate.^ In the Journal des Suvans for that 

 period, we find the following account : ' This disease, which is 

 perhaps the same as that which the last news informed us was 

 afflicting Flanders and Catalonia, commenced in the summer in 

 the Lyonnais and Dauphine, and spread with fury to many 

 other provinces of the kingdom. The cattle which were at- 

 tacked ate, worked, and performed all their other ordinary 

 functions of life, until all at once they were seen to fall and die. 

 There formed on the tono;ue a black or violet-coloured vesicle 

 which formed an eschar in five or six hours. This no sooner fell 

 off than the animals died. In some of those which were opened, 

 the entrails appeared as if rotten, and the tongue for the most 

 part gangrenous and falling to pieces. All kinds of remedies 

 were tried ae:ainst the disease, but that which answered best was 

 to rub the vesicle on the tongue witii a piece of silver until the 

 blood came. After this the wound was dressed with vinegar in 

 which was dissolved salt and pepper. This disease was so con- 

 tagious, that it was easily contracted bv simply touching any- 

 thing that had been near the part affected. A man lost his life 

 through being helped to food from a spoon which had been used 

 to rub the tongue of a diseased ox, and a gentleman of a town 

 in Guienne was attacked by the malady in consequence of hav- 

 ing put in his pocket a piece of thirty sous with which his farmer 

 had scraped another affected animal's tongue. He was treated 

 like the ox, and recovered.' ^ 



^ Nachricht aus Welschland und Spanien wegen Bezauberung des Viehs. 16S2. 



2 Vogels. Annalen von Leipzig, p. 816. 



' Journal des Savans, 1682, p. 399. The quaint veterinary wriicr, Leonard 

 Mascal (Of Oxen, Horses, Sheepes, Hogges, Dogges. London, 1596), is the 

 earliest writer in England whom I can find describing the hlaiiie, or glossanthrax. 

 There is no proof that the disease ever reached Britain during tlie progress of 

 those great epizootics of lliis nature which marched in such a mysterious, yet regular, 

 course on the continent of Europe. The outbreak of 1252, among horses and 

 cattle, appears to have been limited to England, and from.wiiat Mascal relates, the 

 malady would seem to have existed in this country from time immemorial, and to 

 have been due to local and other circumscribed influences. 



