History of Anwial Plagues. 315 



plicity of facts confirm the truth of this remark, as it appears from 

 nearly all the accounts given that the greatest number of beasts have 

 been lost where means of this kind have been most employed. 



' The medicating the cattle externally by rubbing them with sulphur, 

 gunpowder, tobacco-water, and other substances does less harm than 

 the fumigations, but not more good, as experience has largely evinced. 

 The same may be said of those extraordinary mundifications, or cleans- 

 ings of the hair and skin of the cattle, which have been recommended 

 and practised on the same authority of the ancients. There is reason'' 

 to conclude that the contagion, in whatever part it is first imbibed, takes; 

 elfect too soon to be rubbed off" in time 5 and it is most reasonable to] 

 suppose, if the infection be at all absorbed by the skin, this great cleans- 

 ing of it may fit and prepare it to receive the contagion rather than 

 defend it against its admission. All the supposedly preservative methods ^ 

 of this kind, though they have the authority of many writers from an 

 implicit submission to the more ancient, have been found as vain and 

 fruitless in practice as they seem absurd in speculation, when examined 

 on the just and demonstrable principles of physiology. 



' The use of the internal medicines, administered as antidotes to 

 fortify the beasts against the attacks of the contagion, have been equally 

 inetficacious or detrimental with the external means. Those of the 

 medicines that have been recommended for this purpose, which come 

 within the class named alexipharmic, and are proposed to combat the 

 virus, are entirely inadequate in their degree of power to the intention, 

 though some of them, by their invigorative qvialities, may have a tend- 

 ency to oppose the effects of the contagion. Those which have been 

 adopted as antiseptics or resisting putrefaction, such as sulphur, oil ot 

 vitriol, vinegar, &c., when given as preservatives against the contagion, 

 must of course be administered out of season. Since putrefaction in 

 the fluids of the beast is the consequence, not the cause, of the contagion, 

 and, therefore, cannot take place till the contagion be received, nor, as 

 it did not before subsist, can it admit of being counteracted till then. 

 Moreover, the substances of this kind, which are of an acid nature, have, 



from a number of observations wliicli are recorded by the writers on this subject, 

 that the cattle which have been ke[jt out in tlie air, wlien tlie weather was not in- 

 clement through too much cold or moisture, have been less subject to take the in- 

 fection, and recovered in greater numbers when seized with it, tlian those which 

 were housed. In Denmark, during the terriljle visitation mentioned above of this 

 disease in the year 1759, many of the boors attempted to preserve their cattle from 

 the infection by the fumes of tobacco, which they continually smoked in the cow- 

 houses, even sitting up the whole night in turns for that purpose in the midst of 

 them. But it was remarked that scarcely any of the cattle so treated avoided the 

 contagion and death in consequence of it. 



