324 History of Animal Plagues. 



the beasts, render them more subject to the malignant action of the con- 

 tagion, according to the principles above laid down. 



' The Peruvian bark, strong fermented liquors, cordials, and other 

 medicines which have the same tendency to invigorate, and are thence, 

 as will be shown below, agreeable to the true indication of cure, have, 

 amongst the rest, been tried by some tew physicians in their treatment 

 of this disease. But the manner in which they were used, either with 

 respect to the period of the distemper when they were given, the want 

 of due perseverance in the exhibition, the joining to them injurious 

 practices, or some other circumstance, has been such that few in- 

 stances of good can be shown to have resulted from them, though enough 

 to contirm what may be deduced from just principles of physiology re- 

 specting this disease, as to their utility in the cure of it. 



' Bleeding has been practised by most who have attempted to cure 

 the murrain. Many have done it promiscuously, in every period of the 

 disease 3 others have confined it to the first stage only. Whoever con- 

 siders the effects of bleeding on the habit and the nature of the dis- 

 temper, as deduced from the symptoms, cannot doubt but that this 

 evacuation must have largely contributed to augment the extraordinary 

 number of those beasts which have died when subjected to medicinal 

 treatment, compared to that of those which have been left to the 

 favour of nature. The failure of that degree of animal strength in 

 some beasts which is found in others is, as we evidently see from the . 

 facts abov^e-mentioned, not only the cause why one part of the cattle 

 takes the infection while another escapes it, but also, why it proves 

 mortal to one part of those seized with it while the other recovers. 

 Now it must be allowed that bleeding, when to such degree as to have 

 any effect, more than almost any other means, diminishes the animal 

 strength, or the force of circulation. Must it not, then, in proportion, 

 conduce to bring the strong cattle to that state of weakness which is 

 the cause, as we have seen above, \^'hy the disease prevails over nature 

 in some more than others, and to render still more weak those which 

 were so ? 



* It is not to be wondered at, nevertheless, that physicians who have 

 hastily considered the murrain as an inflammatory disease ' should adopt 



1 The notion that the murrain is an inflammatory disease, has arisen from the hasty 

 conclusion of physicians of its being similar and having a great affinity to the small- 

 pox and plague. But it will be manifest, from moderate observations on the re- 

 spective symptoms of them, that tliere is no such similarity or affinity betwixt them 

 in nature. The small-pox always procluces general inflammation, and consequently 

 signs of a strong fever in a greater or less degree in the first stage, and the excess 

 of that inflammation is frequently the cause of its proving mortal. The same is 

 seen in the plague, which begins with symptoms of strong fever and inflammation. 



