200 History of Animal Plagues. 



suffered from excessive thirst, and drank greedily ; afterwards 

 they wholly abstained from food and water, and w^ere unable to 

 bwallow or chew the cud. The want of sustenance caused death 

 to take place more quickly than would have been the case from 

 the nature of the disease. In the stomach lumbrici (worms) 

 were very often found, and the dejections were very fetid, of 

 various colours, and sometimes stained with bloody humours. 

 Nearly all the cattle, at the later stages, were foul-smelling; their 

 breathing was laborious and heavy ; not unfrequently there was 

 a cough, and within seven days they generally died. Those 

 which reached another day (but they were very few) usually 

 escaped, especially if the hair became rough and fell off; and if 

 they could not easily arise from a recumbent position, it was 

 usual to prevent their attempting to do so. 



' It was proved by examination, that they continually suffered 

 from affections of the bowels. This appeared most evident on 

 three examinations which we held on the dead bodies of oxen, 

 that had died of the disease; for besides ulcers in the mouth, 

 fauces, eesophagus, stomach, and lungs, there were spots of a 

 colour varying from red to livid or gangrenous, nearly the same 

 in each animal; but the lesions in the intestines were not alike in 

 all. For in the first ox which had perished on the third day, we 

 found in the omasum [pmaso) a hard mass of hay, and that ball 

 which Pliny calls the tophus of young heifers, produced by licking 

 off the hairs with their tongue and rapidly swallowing them, 

 when, by the peristaltic motion, they were rolled up, and the 

 saliva was obliged to pass through, as in a filter. The other 

 intestines were in a fair, healthy state. In the second, which 

 died on the sixth day, the liver, intestines, and lungs were com- 

 pletely mortified. In the third, the heart and brain were nearly 

 corrupt. ... And it is extremely wonderful that this deadly 

 poison, which had destroyed the bovine race with such havoc in 

 these years, was wholly innocuous to other animals. ... It is 

 also remarkable, that the seeds of the contagion were not only 

 carried by sick oxen, but were more frequently conveyed by shep- 

 herds and veterinary surgeons, who brought the infection to the 

 healthy; and it was also transmitted by dogs and other animals 

 which had touched the diseased with their hair, wings, or 



