History of Animal Plagues. 323 



are the vitriolic acid, vinegar, verjuice, sour dough, butter-milk, com- 

 mon salt, and sal ammoniacus. Others, who are attached to the doc- 

 trines ot" ant)ther modern school, considering this disease as inflamma- 

 tory, have administered medicines they hold as emollient and sedative, 

 of which nitre, cream of tartar, acids, mucilages, and oils are the princi- 

 pal/ Mercurialis, antimonialis, and white vitriol have also been em- 

 ployed in the intention of febrifuges by some of the present physicians, 

 who are favourers of chemical and metallic medicines. 



' But alike has been the success of all the proposed remedies of these 

 several classes, which is, that a remarkably great number of the beasts 

 to which they have been administered have died, in proportion to that 

 of those which have been left to nature. This may appear strange, but 

 the fact is that all of these medicaments which have any operation, 

 except those which have an invigorating and strengthening quality, dis- 

 turb, in some way or other, the animal economy, and, thence weakening 



^ How far the notion, that the mortal effects of febrile disorders in general 

 depend on inflammation, and that the indications of cure are to tx; ihence deduced, 

 may be just, does not make a proper object of examination here, though, perhaps, 

 a medical error in this point has not only been destructive to many cattle in cases 

 of trials to cure the murrain, but to a greater number of mankind than were ever 

 saved by all the means of medicinal art. But however that may be, it is obvious 

 the murrain cannot be classed amongst inflammatory disorders when the symptoms 

 of it, that will be below investigated, are duly considered. It must be allowed, in- 

 deed, that when the whole animal economy is perverted by this distemper in the 

 second stage of it, the efforts of nature to relieve herself from the discrasy of the 

 fluids, produce inflammation in particular parts, the marks of which are constantly 

 found. Inflammation is not, however, in the murrain, even the secondary cause of 

 the disease itself, as it is in the small-pox, plague, and some other febrile contagious 

 distempers of mankind, but the last consequence of it in the most advanced state. 

 On the contrary, the symptoms of the flrst stage of the murrain, and frequently of 

 the second, exhibit no signs of general inflammation, but of general and partial 

 weakness. A lentor of the animal action, a stupor, and a paralysis of the head and 

 digestive organs, are, as we shall see below, the first visible effects. When these 

 are aggravated so as to prevail over the efforts of nature to perform the vital func- 

 tions, the disease necessarily proves fatal ; but where the animal strength is suf- 

 ficient to resist for a certain period, the disease terminates by a critical discharge 

 of the virus or morbid matter, and the beast recovers. Certainly, therefore, the 

 treating the murrain as an inflammatory disorder by the exhibitions which diminish 

 irritaliility, and lessen the vis vittr, or animal strength, is conspiring with the efforts 

 of the contagion to bring on the destruction of the beasts, as tliose efforts prevail 

 according to the weakness of the subjects. It must be admitted, indeed, that the 

 medicines administered in this intention arc not very jiowerful in their effect, but 

 when conjoined to bleeding or other evacuations, they have some share in render- 

 ing nature unable to resist the action of the contagion. They may consequently be 

 granted to have contributed in some degree to that remarkable loss of the cattle 

 whicli has attended tiie attempts to cure the murrain. 



