274 History of Animal Plagues. 



subject I have had an opportunity of being present when three 

 cows have been skinned and opened. The lungs in all were 

 inflamed and blistered, and the guts in some places inflamed, 

 in others livid, the gall-bladders exceedingly large. A collar- 

 maker's man, who has been assisting in skinning above a 

 hundred dead cows, assures me these are the general appear- 

 ances in them all, except that in one he met with a large bag 

 full of corruption between the bag enclosing the heart and 

 the back-bone ; in another he found the gall-bladder quite con- 

 tracted and shrivelled up, having little or no gall in it, and in 

 several he found schirrous knobs in the livers. 



' Nov. 26. I desired Mr Hill, an ingenious apothecary in 

 Westminster, to accompany me to see a cow dissected, and to 

 help me examine everything very carefully, having got her 

 drawn into a shed, to defend us from the weather. When the 

 skin was taken off she appeared very fat ; the muscles looked of 

 a darker colour than usual. On opening the abdomen, the 

 caul [omentum) appeared very fat; the paunch was greatly dis- 

 tended; on making a puncture, much wind rushed out; it had. 

 in it a great deal of food ; the inside looked well and did not 

 peel ; the second and third stomachs, or the omasum, as also the 

 fourth stomach, or alomasimi, were almost empty, but looked 

 well; the liver was firm, well-coloured, and sound, except a few 

 schirrous knobs about the size of nutmegs; the gall-bladder was 

 exceedingly large, and full of very fluid gall ; the guts were in- 

 flamed in many places, the colon and caecum livid. I had the 

 curiosity to have them measured. From the anus to the in- 

 sertion of the caecum there were twelve yards (the caecum was 

 an ell long), and from the caecum to the pylorus there were 

 fifty-two yards. The midriff [diaphragm) was much swelled, in- 

 flamed, adhered in some places to the pleura, and almost wholly 

 covered with bladders of water. There was no appearance of 

 any inflammation on the pleura, or in either the internal or ex- 

 ternal intercostal muscles; the windpipe was inflamed greatly 

 throughout its whole course, especially its Inside ; but the gullet, 

 which lav so near it, was not in the least inflamed. The heart 

 was of its natural size, the pericardium full of very fluid blood, 

 probably from the bursting of some branch of the coronary 



