2,84 History of Animal Plagues. 



discharged from the nostrils or eyes of an infected beast^ and this 

 was allowed to remain till the symptoms of the distemper ap- 

 ' peared.' Dr Layard, writing on the 26th of November, 1757, 

 to the Earl of Macclesfield, endeavours to remove all apprehen- 

 sions of a second attack of the disease after inoculation. 'An 

 lentire conviction of the analogy between this disease and small- 

 pox would not permit me to omit mentioning the great advan- 

 tages which must arise from inoculation. ... So long as the 

 distemper has raged in Great Britain not one attested proof has 

 been brought of any head having this disease regularly more 

 than once The Marquis (de Courtivron) says that this dis- 

 temper is not communicated but from one beast to another imme- 

 diately. I must beg leave to say, that, to my knowledge, the 

 j distemper in February, 1756, was carried from the farm-yard, 

 I where I visited some distempered cattle, to two other farm-yards, 

 'each at a considerable distance, without any communication of 

 the cattle with each other, and merely by the means of servants 

 going to and fro, or of dogs.'' ^ 



The disease, as we have seen, raged in all its virulency in 

 this country for many years.^ We have no difficulty in dis- 

 covering the cause for this. Veterinary science scarcely found 

 the shadow of a representative in the ignorant cowleech, and 

 there were none but medical men at all competent to give any 

 advice as to the best measures to be adopted to meet the emerg- 

 ency. These men, able and skilful undoubtedly in their own 

 profession, had, in all probability, nine-tenths of them, never be- 

 fore given comparative pathology an hour's study; and the know- 

 ledge of the diseases of mankind only, without this study, would 

 be far more likely to mislead than to guide them, and to make 

 them oppose, rather than approve of or suggest, the proper pre- 

 ventive measures. There appears to have been no Lancisi — no Dr 

 Bates, to point out the incurable character of the disease, and to 

 suggest that as it spread by contagion alone, so it could only be 

 suppressed by destroying the contagious source. It is even 



1 Philosophical Transactions, vol. i. p. 528. 



- Bishop Berkeley, writmg to the London Magazine in 1747, says, ' If I can but 

 introduce the general use of tar-water for this murrain, which is in truth a fever, I 

 flatter myself this may pave the way for its general use in all fevers whatever.' 



