1 88 History of Animal Plagues. 



parts ; bat at other times only the bronchial glands, tonsils, 

 and adjoining textures, as well as the muscles of the oesophagus 

 and larynx; the morbid appearances often extending to the 

 tongue in a great number of cattle as a deep and somewhat 

 transverse fissure, sometimes involving the whole organ; these 

 fissures, as the disease progresses, become foul callous ulcers. 

 Besides these various morbid characteristics, other rare (or incon- 

 stant) appearances are observed, such as suppurating tumours 

 showing themselves in the glands of the throat, and abscesses 

 in the lungs and liver; at other times, a number of small tumours 

 arise upon the skin covering the body, which neither suppurate 

 nor change colour, but slowly disappear or remain until the death J 



of the animal. From this last and rare circumstance, it has been ■ 



the opinion of some that this affection should be universally 

 designated " variola bovina ; " to which disease, however, many 

 high authorities thought oxen were not liable. But yet, if this 

 be the case, as might be suspected, how is it that, in so general a 

 disease as this variola is, so small a number exhibit the morbid 

 eruption on the skin ? Nor does variola usually make such great 

 slaughter of the sick, nor yet is it so general or so rapid in its 

 course. Besides, in what other cutaneous affection was so rarely 

 seen a simple elevation of the skin, except in the human morbilli } 

 or some hard and badly suppurating tumours unequally raised on 

 one or more parts of the body ?^^ The writer who drew up this 

 report was Marco Novara, professor of practical medicine at 

 Patavia. 



In this year, or the preceding, the small-pox of sheep is sup- 

 posed to have appeared in England for the first time, — though 

 erroneously, if the student will refer to the year 1277. Dr 

 Fuller, in his work on Eruptive Fevers, says : ' There was, 

 about the year 17 10 or 171 1, upon the South Downs in Sussex, 

 a certain fever raging epidemically among the sheep which the 

 shepherds called the small-pox ; and truly, in most things, it nearly 

 resembled it. It began with a burning heat and unquenchable 

 thirst; it broke out in fiery pustules all the body over. These 



^ Bottani. Op. cit., vol. vi. p. 98. Dr Michelotti, who was in the Venetian 

 territories in October, 171 1, gives an excellent description of the malady; a trans- 

 lation will be found in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 365, p. 83. 



