2 8o History of Animal Plagues. 



of their sick cattle. Dr Parsons, another ingenious Fellow of 



■ the Society, said, that the cattle in the high grounds about 

 Hampstead, Highgate, Millhill, and Hembdon had hitherto re- 



, mained free from the infection, but that it had spread all about 



' in the lower grounds.^ 



\ 'Mr Hoffman, a learned Danish gentleman present at this 

 meeting, said this infection was first carried into Denmark by 

 raw hides of cattle dead of this distemper, rubbed with wood 

 ashes, in order to preserve them fit for tanning, which were 

 brought from Flanders ; that some cows sickened in a few days 

 after the unpacking of these hides in Denmark ; and that they 

 have lost upwards of 50,000 head of cattle in that kingdom. At 

 another meeting, Mr Collinson, a member greatly deserving of 

 the Society, acquainted the company present that a farmer in 

 Essex, who had the distemper among his cows, invited a neigh- 

 bouring farmer to come and assist him in giving drenches to 

 some of his sick cattle j the good-natured man went accordingly, 

 and spent best part of the day with his neighbour, to lend him 

 his help in his distress, little dreaming of what ill consequence 

 this friendly act was about to prove to himself; for being so 

 many hours conversant with the diseased cows, so much of the 

 infectious effluvia adhered to his clothes, that, as he was walking 

 home, which was about a mile and a half, his way lying through 

 a field in which several of his own cows were feeding, he no 

 sooner entered the field, but the cattle all left off their grazing, 

 ran to the farther end of the field snorting and flinging up their 

 noses, showing the greatest uneasiness at their mastei-'s approach, 

 and endeavouring, as much as possibly they could, to avoid him, 

 as though they smelt something very disagreeable ; and so in- 

 deed it proved to them, for the very next day many of them fell 

 sick, and died in a few days.'' ^ 



I ^ At a later period of this outbreak, it was observed that Wiltshire and a few 

 other places remarkable for a light, porous, and dry soil, with an elevated and open 

 aspect, escajDed the disease altogether, or were but lightly visited. 



^ Philosophical Transactions, vol. xliv. A book entitled ' An Account of the 

 Present Epidemical Distemper amongst the Black Cattle, &c., by a Member of the 

 College of Physicians, published in London in 1745, may be mentioned here for 

 the purpose of reference. It is full of grave errors and imperfect or erroneous 

 observations, especially as regards the pathological anatomy of the disease in ques- 



