2,44 History of Animal Plagues. 



It was wonderfully contagious, and did not exercise its ravages 

 all at once, but successively, invading kingdom after kingdom. 



It was transmitted in different ways; sometimes one ox gave 

 it to another; at other times the clothes of men carried the pesti- 

 lential miasma; and if healthy animals breathed the odour from 

 the fetid dejections of those which were diseased, they became 

 affected. Those people who kept their cattle shut up and per- 

 fectly isolated, preserved them from the contagion. The proofs 

 were convincing that this ferment or contagion altered, in a re- 

 markably brief space of time, the solids and fluids to such a 

 degree that they became a mass of corruption. 



It was useless labour to attempt to discover the cause of the 

 malady in the malignity of the stars, the corruption of the air, 

 inundations, wars, or other similar calamities. It is asked what 

 kind of malady the stars were likely to produce, and why man- 

 kind, who lived under the same unpropitious influences, escaped 

 with no damaire. Ramazzini lauo;hed at these absurdities, and 

 with reason ; for having in his youth read the essays of Pic and 

 Mirandole, exposing the astrologers, he never afterwards troubled 

 himself to form his opinions on their studies. Those who main- 

 tained that this disease was due to other sources, had a difficult 

 problem to resolve ; and it was not easy to reconcile the different 

 phenomena observed, with the causes assigned by the majority of 

 the physiologists. For example, how was it that the malignity 

 of the air and unhealthy pastures only afiected the bovine species, 

 and spared all the other animals living under the same sky 

 breathing the same air, and living in the same pastures ? Or 

 how did an unhealthy dew, which affected immense pasturages, 

 only give the plague to one ox, which communicated it to all 

 the others it came in contact with ? Solve, who can, these ques- 

 tions ! These so-named causes being known, we cannot hazard a 

 doubt but that they will produce general diseases amongst many 

 kinds of animals. And it has been sufficiently proved already that 

 this disease of cattle came by contagion. In the face of all the 

 various hyjjotheses, there was the positive fact of the existence of 

 a miasm or contagious ferment, which was capable of corrupting 

 the humours, and of giving rise to the same malady in other 

 cattle by communication. Those who attributed it to a para- 



