History of Animal Plagices. 253 



in 1731, to the dryness of that year, which compelled the herb- 

 ivorous animals to eat the leaves of trees, and these were covered 

 with caterpillars. The disease was very contagious, and was com- 

 municated not only by the immediate contact of the humour exud- 

 ing from the sore, but ev^en by the instruments employed to dress 

 the ulcers. The most successful method of treating the malady 

 was to scrape, with any silver instrument, the vesicle as soon as it 

 appeared, and then wash the tongue with a decoction of garlic, salt, 

 pepper, and asafoetida in vinegar, according to the Hippocratian 

 maxim : malignorum remedia sunt lac, allium, vinum fervef actum 

 sal et acetum. When the margin of the ulcer became hard and 

 callous it was dressed with oil of vitriol.^ In Italv, where it was 

 designated the cancro volante, it extended as regularly and 

 rapidly as elsewhere ; and, particularly in the Venetian States, 

 caused much alarm. It reached Ferrara and the Romagna; at- 

 tacked horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs; and altogether disappeared 

 in that country in 1732.^ 



It has been regarded as somewhat singular that the malady 

 did not extend more towards the north, nor towards Lower 

 Germany. That it did not enter the latter region, there is the 

 positive testimony of a contemporary writer, Engel.^ 



Towards the end of 1732, a very general epidemy of influenza 

 overspread nearly the whole of the known world, traversing it 

 from east to west, according to Gluge.* It was observed in 

 Edinburgh in December, and in England at the commencement 

 of Januarv. Horses and other animals were much affected with 

 disease before, or coincident with, the appearance of the malady. 

 Dr Arbuthnot describes the meteorological conditions of these 

 years in the following terms: ^ There have been of late two re- 

 markable instances of the influence of the air in producing an 

 epidemical disease, perhaps over the greatest part of the surface 

 of the earth ; the first happened in the year 1728, the last in the 

 latter end of the year 1732 and beginning of 1733, which, being 



^ Liger. La Maison Rustique. See also Reflexions sur la Maladie du Betail, 

 p. 169. 



2 Bottani. Op. cit., p. 151. Miiratori. Annali d'ltalia, vol. xu. p. 1S2. 

 3 Engel. De I3rutoriim Morbus. Rintdlii, 1733. 

 * Cluge. Influenza, p. 81. 



