314 History of A nimal Plagues. 



and only found at or towards the end of the disease. Like variations 

 are, as above intimated, seen in other malignant contagious diseases : 

 and render an accurate observation of the symptoms, when they break 

 out fresh at a distance of time, necessary to the forming a just descrip- 

 tion of them, in order to the distinguishing them with certainty from 

 others which are similar. 



' A.S the mortahty of cattle occasioned by the murrain has been a 

 very great evil to many countries, means for the prevention or cure of 

 it have been earnestly sought after by great numbers of physicians and 

 others. But this research has been made with very little success any- 

 where, either with regard to the interest of the proprietors of the cattle 

 or benefit to the public, except what relates to the introduction or 

 spreading of the infection into places or countries free from it. 



' Among the means of prevention of the murrain, those the most 

 generally adopted, though the least effectual to the end, have been the 

 attempts to render the places where beasts are kept, or the beasts them- 

 selves, insusceptible of the infection. In this intention, by an imitation 

 of what the ancients recommended and practised as preservatives against 

 the plague, fumigations, scents, and external medicaments employed on 

 the cattle have been almost everywhere used. 



* With respect to fumigations of the places where beasts are kept, all 

 confidence in them must fall to the ground whenever the opinion of 

 the air's being a vehicle of the contagion is refuted, as they were per- 

 formed with a view to destroy the putrid eflHuvia with which it was 

 supposed to be impregnated, and which was considered as the matter of 

 the contagion. But these fumigations fi-equently repeated, as they were 

 for this purpose, in close places where the beasts were confined, were not 

 only ineffectual to that purpose, but noxious in a considerable degree as 

 being conducive to the prevalence of the contagion. For, being in 

 general made with bodies that afforded an acrid steam, such as sulphur, 

 vinegar, tobacco, or terebinthinate substances, they injured the respira- 

 tion of the beasts, and thence, diminishing the animal strength, render- 

 ed them more disposed to be affected by the contagion.^ A multi- 



which blisters on the tongue seem, from the accounts of it, to be a constant, prin- 

 cipal, and characteristic symptom ; and proper care, therefore, should be taken to 

 avoid confounding this disease with the murrain, either ni reading or practice. It 

 appears to have been curable, in most subjects, solely by opening the blisters ; and 

 is therefore evidently of a much less malignant nature than the murrain ; in 

 vi^hich, as is well known, from many trials, that operation would be of very little 

 avail. This circumstance alone would give a sufficient criterion for distinguishing 

 the one from the other. (Mr Dossie is here speaking of 'glossanthrax.') 



1 A free respiration of fresh undepraved air is essentially necessary to the strength 

 of the beasts, in order to their resisting the effects of the contagion. It has appeared, 



