214 History of Animal Plagttes. 



his milk ; and to those who kept many cows that loss was con- 

 siderable. 



' Nor was there ever wanting one or other who gave them 

 hopes of a cure. 



'To obviate these three difficulties/ the gentlemen encouraged 

 them to hope for a brief (charitable collection)^ but assured them 

 that such only as complied with these directions should have any 

 benefit of it. Accordingly they ordered a daily account to be 

 taken of the conduct of each cow-keeper, and allowed or dis- 

 allowed their pretensions to this brief, as well as to the forty 

 shillings per cow, as they complied or disregarded these direc- 

 tions. 



' This had a pretty good effect ; but here in England, where 

 every man is at liberty to dispose of his cattle as he pleases, 

 nothing but making them sensible that it was each man's par- 

 ticular interest to comply with these methods could do ; this, 

 though true in fact, yet the reader will readily judge to be very 

 difficult among such a number ; but the gentlemen spared no 

 labour to accomplish it; for that purpose they summoned them 

 one or twice every week, urged all that could be said to induce 

 their compliance, and omitted no warrantable means to frustrate 

 their folly. I had orders from the beginning to assist those gen- 

 tlemen with my advice, which I did at most of their meetings; as 

 also to make a stricter inquiry into the disease by dissections, &c. 



' Accordingly I discoursed the cow-leeches about the customs 

 and diseases that cows were subject to, and consulted such books 

 as treated of them ; but concerning this disease could gain but 

 small assistance from either, 



'I then made dissections of sixteen cows indifferent degrees 

 of infection, and found the putrefaction of their viscera to in- 

 crease in proportion to the time of their illness. 



' The first five that I opened had herded with those that were 

 ill, and the symptoms of this distemper were just become visible. 

 In these the gall-bladders were larger than usual, and filled with 

 bile of a natural taste and smell, but of a greener colour. Their 

 pancreas were shrivelled, some of the glands obstructed and 

 tumified. Many of the glands in their mesentery were twice or 

 thrice their natural bigness. Their lungs were a little inflamed. 



