History of Animal Plagues. i 



oj 



an endemic among thd troops. One oF the remaining two wasted 

 away from the disease and died; the other became immensely 

 swollen in the abdomen, and also died. The men with scurvy 

 had the same symptoms as these horses exhibited.'^ This may 

 have been an outbreak of farcv. In July all the cattle in Stein, 

 Grublowitz, and Metzdorf (Silesia) were affected with '■ foot and 

 mouth disease ' {pelle ex lingua et ungidis decentihus — aphthous 

 fever).^ Diderich in his ' Historia Pestis ^ says: 'I have re- 

 marked among mv cows in Schamburg, near Custrine, in the 

 year 1686, as well as among all the other cattle in the place, 

 that, in the middle of the winter, fourteen days after each other, 

 and without a single exception, all were thoroughly salivated, 

 just as happens when the old women of Hamburg cure the 

 French, and other chronic diseases, with mercury. Never- 

 theless, no single head died, although during the whole time 

 the stock could eat but little. This strano-e sickness was not re- 

 marked bevond this place.' ^ 



A.D. 1688. ' The winter was severely cold in Germany, with 

 great snow, followed by a sudden thaw and heat. In summer 

 broke forth an epidemic catarrh, with danger of suffocation. . . 

 It was called the hot catarrh, for the matter discharged by the 

 nose was very thin, clear, and hot. A slio;ht fever attended the 

 defluxions. . . . About the middle of May beran a fever in 

 London, and all over England, which reached and spread all 

 over Ireland m .July. The symptoms were the same in all. It 

 began and ended its course in seven weeks. . . . Though not one 

 of fifteen escaped it, yet not one of a thousand that had it died. 

 It was generally observed, both in England and Ireland, that, 

 some times before the fever beiran a slio-ht but universal disease 

 seized horses, viz. a great defluxion of rheum from their noses. 

 This fever spread all over Europe from cast to west.' ^ ' An 

 epidemic of influenza in England and at Dublin, which was pre- 

 ceded by a distemper attended by nasal defluxion (thought to be 

 glanders) among horses, especially those belonging tt) the king's 



' Eggerdes. Ephem. Nat. Curios., p. 416. 



^ Stcnzel. Scrip. .Siles., vol. ii. p. 363. 



^ Kanold. Jalireshistorie von d. Seuchen des Vichs. p. 80. 



* Dr Short. Op. cit., vol. i. p. 455. 



