History of Animal Plagues. 189 



pustules maturated, and, if death happened not first, dried up 

 into seabs about the twelfth day. 



' It could not be cured, no, nor in the least mitigated, by phle- 

 botomy, drinks, or any medicines or methods they could invent 

 or hear of. It was exceedingly contagious and mortal, for when 

 it came it swept away almost whole flocks; but yet it could in 

 nowise be accounted the same with our human small-pox, be- 

 cause it never affected mankind.^ ^ 



A.D. 1712. Winter cloudy; much snow. Summer damp. 

 Inundations in various countries. Earthquakes, and a creat 

 eruption of Vesuvius, lasting from February until July. 

 Epidemic miliary or sweating pestilence at Miimpelgart, and 

 catarrhal fever or influenza in various places. In Hungary many, 

 insects and venomous reptiles. ' In the months of June ancjl 

 July there was intense heat, accompanied by swarms of insects] 

 snakes, and reptiles, which especially attacked the country people. 

 The wliole of the body of one who had been bitten was imme- 

 diately impregnated with a poison of a sulphureo-saline nature, 

 and swelled throughout, beginning with the tongue, and to such 

 a degree that articulation was impossible. There was also acute 

 head-ache. Cattle, too, were attacked by them, and great mor- 



* Thomas Fuller, IM.D. Exanthematologia, or an Account of Eruptive Fe- 

 vers, especially the Measles and Small-pox. London, 1730. A Mr Hall, who 

 lived about the middle of the last century, and who published a work on agriculture 

 {The Gentleman Partner), mentions a disease somewhat analogous to sheep small- 

 pox ; but as unfortunately I am not now in a position to be able to refer to the 

 book, I will quote what Dr Paulet says in his Treatise on Epizootics, published in 

 1775, when speaking of what he terms the 'crystalline disease' of sheep: 'We 

 ought to distinguish clearly between the hydatids which accompany the rot and a 

 crystalline eruption to which sheep are liable, particularly in England. It begins 

 at first, according to Mr Hall (seeZd? Gentilhomme Cultivateur, tome x. chap.-xxxi. ), by 

 an inflammation of the skin around the chest and the belly, from whence it extends 

 to the other parts. Tliis inflammation is always accompanied by blisters {cloches) 

 which contain an acrid Ijlood-coloured lluid. The disease is very contagious ; and 

 if the affected sheep are not sejiarated from the healthy ones, the whole flock runs 

 the risk of being infected. This is, perhaps, the disease which the ancients termed 

 pusula. It is necessary to change the water and the pasture. The best means of 

 treating it consists in taking two drachms of sulphur, half an ounce of honey mixed 

 up in half a pint of nettle-juice, and giving this to the sick sheep every day for two 

 weeks. The blisters must be opened in order to allow the humour to escape, and 

 the wounds washed with the juice of wormwood. The fourtli tlay, tlie sheep must 

 be bled.' ' Vol. ii. p. 287. 



