320 History of Animal Plagues. 



destruction of such beasts as neglect or the casual want of opportunity 

 of inoculation had left exposed to the rage of it. This we see happen 

 at present with us, in the instance of the small-pox, from the very ex- 

 tensive dissemination of the infection by inoculation. But this disease 

 differs very materially from that of the murrain, with relation to that 

 operation. For we find no instance of the contagion of the small-pox 

 being ever totally suppressed in any country where it has once gained 

 admission j and therefore, if general inoculation mitigate the effects, it 

 may be adopted for that disease without the mischief of causing a per- 

 petuity of the contagion, as would happen from a general practice of it 

 for the murrain, the contagion of which will otherwise spontaneously 

 cease in certain periods, as past events have incontestably manifested. 



' The failure of inoculation to answer its intended purpose, as evinced 

 by the instances above quoted, and others, has disposed the favourers of 

 it not to insist on its utility when practised on cattle in general. But 

 Camper, De Monchy, and some others of those who have most lately 

 given opinions on this subject, still continue to recommend it to be 

 performed on calves, or young cattle. But even admitting a greater 

 number of them than of older cattle might recover, when subjected to 

 it, yet, if it be not, as we have above shown good reason to believe, a 

 security against future infection, it can be of no vitility. The objection, 

 moreover, against the general use of inoculation, with regard to its 

 \ spreading and perpetuating the contagion, avails equally against the 

 inoculation of the calves as the adult beasts. For what will secure the 

 other cattle from this infection when the calves have the disease in 

 places near them ? Will not this universal propagation of the con- 

 tagion, in spite of all the care that can be taken, of course occasion its 

 frequently reaching some of the older cattle- and will they not infect 

 jeach other the same as at present, only in a more general manner ? It 

 jmay be answered that, if all the calves be inoculated, the whole stock 

 of cattle would in time be rendered insusceptible of the infection, and 

 therefore not subject to this mischief But if, which is, nevertheless, 

 denied, for the reasons before specified, the inoculated cattle were ren- 

 dered incapable of having the disease again, yet the detriment arising 

 from the above-explained effects of such a practice, before it could pos- 

 sibly be extended in any general manner, and the impracticability of 

 making more than a part of the people conform regularly to it, would 

 be extremely great. This plan has, besides, the further inconvenience 

 of being incompatible with any supply of foreign cattle in places of 

 great scarcity, for the contagion being spread everywhere by the con- 

 stant inoculation of the calves, such foreign cattle would of course be 

 affected by it, which must produce such a loss to the dealers in them as 



