2,46 Histo7y of Animal Plagues. 



the effects are as deadly as the poison itself. Purgatives, above 

 all those of a drastic kind, augment the disease ; neither is it al- 

 together safe to prescribe aloes and the other purgatives. Ano- 

 dyne injections, composed of emollient herbs boiled in milk, are 

 the best agents for acting on the bowels. The first indication, 

 which is to expel the poison, is fulfilled by using alexipharmics 

 not too heating, but temperate ; such as the pimpernell, angelica, 

 germandria, &c. Many have committed a great error in ex- 

 posing the diseased animals to the cold, and the wind and rain, 

 when they have been separated from those in health ; instead of 

 keeping them in well-closed comfortable stables, covering them 

 with sacks of straw and of hay, in order to assist them in ex- 

 pelling the poison. 



Setons in the necks of the animals were useful, but blisters 

 were injurious. The most preferable treatment was to cauterize 

 the skin with a hot iron, and thus to form artificial ulcers by 

 which the materies morbi might escape. 



It could not be understood why some practitioners should 

 employ febrifuge medicines, such as quinine, in quelling the 

 malady. This remedy had doubtless been maintained by Ramaz- 

 zini, in an elegantly-written discourse which he had delivered 

 in the University of Pavia on the diseases of cattle, to be the 

 most efficacious. Yet it was necessary to avow, that in continued 

 inflammatory fevers of the kind to which this epizooty undoubt- 

 edly belonged, this remedy did not shorten their duration. But 

 it was still a most useful medicine, and its beneficial action was 

 always the more prompt in large doses. The giving vermifuge 

 medicines, in accordance with the hypothesis of Kircher's living 

 corruption, was very wrong; and much more blamable were those 

 who recommended sympathetic remedies, — preservative as well as 

 curative. These consisted in taking a diseased animal, digging 

 a deep pit, throwing it in and then covering it up, with the 

 notion that by this means the disease, then spreading abroad, 

 soon loses its virulency and ceases, — a custom too absurd and 

 superstitious to demand a moment's consideration. Daily ex- 

 perience proves the utter inefficacy of medicines to cure the 

 disease, and we ought to put no faith in them as preservative 

 agents. Assuredly the best results will be obtained from extreme 



