184 History of Animal Plagues. 



derived from the corrupt state of the pasture lands from the ex- 

 cessive rains ; and besides this, to the putridity occasioned by 

 the numbers of dead locusts and cicadae that were about at the 

 end of the summer and beginning of the autumn of 17 10. 

 They say that the State of Carniola avoided the plague through 

 prohibiting, by public edicts, the admission of pigs from Croatia, 

 because there might have been mixed with the acorns they ate 

 in the oak forests thereabouts, some of the locusts which com- 

 pletely covered the ground around Sagratia, and the vicinity of 

 Hungary and Croatia. It was also remarked with us that dogs, 

 and some say crows, which fed on the diseased flesh, immediately 

 died.'i 



According to Schroeckius, it manifested itself at Augsburg 

 towards the end of the summer of 171 1. 'About the end of 

 the summer and throughout the autumn, that plague which had 

 been so destructive to the bovine race in Germany and Italy, 

 after it had proceeded by degrees from Hungary towards the 

 Danube, attacked our territory and produced great destruction 

 to beasts, sometimes destroying whole herds amongst us, and in 

 many neighbouring places. And this was not caused by any 

 foulness in the atmosphere, but by the contagion of oxen 

 brought from the infected countries; and this was patent, 

 because it first attacked those pastures adjoining the foreigners, 

 and altogether spared those cattle to which no infected animals 

 had approached, and which had been immediately separated from 

 any in the same herd that were infected.'^ He termed it a 

 ' malionant dysentery.^ ' The saliva that the diseased beasts drop- 

 ped in the pastures infected them, and thus communicated the 

 malady to those cattle which afterwards grazed thereon. It ap- 

 peared certain that this acrid matter passed by way of the mouth, 

 oesophagus, the stomachs, and the bowels, and, in infecting these, 

 caused an irritation which was soon communicated to the nerves, 

 from whence arose the spasmodic movements. The constriction 

 of the vessels which followed, induced congestions and inflamma- 

 tions, and converted the whole body into a corrupt mass. In 



^ Gerbezii. Clironologia Medico-practica. Frankfort, 17 13, p. 203. 



2 Schro'eckii. Constitutio Epidemica, Ephem. Nat. Curios. Appendix, p. 23. 



