History of Animal Plagiies. 325 



this most effectual means of resisting inflammation, but there is not the 

 least ground for this notion of die nature of the disease. 



'In the first stage the contrary of general inflammation appears, for 

 then the symptoms exhibit signs of languor and a disposition to insensi- 

 bility. Nor is there any general inflammation seen in the whole course 

 of the disease, except when deposits of the morbid matter are made in 

 the last stage, which, if they prove eruptions or tumours in the external 

 parts, are a salutary crisis that should not, on any account, be disturbed 

 or checked, or, if they fall on the internal parts, are a fatal symptom 

 not to be resisted, and are then, moreover, attended with such a state of 

 weakness in the beast that any considerable evacuation must soon be 

 followed with a mortal sinking. At what time, therefore, is the bleed- 

 ing to be practised with a view tothe relieving against the inflammation? 

 In the flrst stage, when there is a total absence of any such inflamma- 

 tion and the whole danger of mischief lies in that of the want of sufficient 

 strength, or in the last stage, when there is such a state of weakness 

 that the evacuation must necessarily kill the beast ; or such a critical 

 eruption as, if suffered to take its course, may save the animal, but if 

 checked or thrown in by the diminution of the lever, which supports 

 it, must attack the internal parts and either cause instant suffocation or 

 convulsions, or, in a short time, a mortiflcation of those parts ? ^ In 



Whence they may both be properly deemed inflammatory disorders, as inflamma- 

 tion is one principal secondary cause of the dangerous symptoms and mortality 

 attending them. But in the murrain no such inflammation ever appears in the 

 first stage, but the very contrary ; nor does any great degree of heat occur till either 

 towards the middle of the second stage, and then only in the case of a disposition to 

 eruptions, when, as Dr Layard has justly remarked, it is a prognostic of a recovery, 

 or at the end of the second stage, when deposits of the morbid matter are made on 

 the viscera and soon induce a mortification. In the smalI-])ox, an eruption is the 

 sole salutary crisis which nature has instituted, and through which the subject can 

 be saved. It is tlierefore, together with the preceding and attending inflammation 

 and fever, essential to the disease. But, on the contrary, in the murrain, though ' 

 eruptions are one mode of the crisis of the disease, or in other words, one way by 

 which nature discharges the morbid matter when of due maturity, yet they are 

 often wholly wanting, even when the beasts recover, and, therefore, not essential to 

 the disease, even where it has its full natural progress. For in the United Pro- 

 vinces, and other moist and low countries, cruinions are most frequently not found 

 in the beasts which do well, but a diarrhoea, or looseness, constitutes tlie critical 

 discharge, and, in such case, no great degree of heat arises in the whole course of 

 the disease. This proves an entire diversity in the nature of the diseases to be 

 betwixt the small-pox and the murrain, and evinces that the indications of cure 

 which are adopted from a supposed analogy of them stand on a very erroneous 

 foundation. 



' Dr Layard, who, on the whole, has written the most sensi1)iy on lliis disease, 

 says, ' Bleeding, therefore, will be found necessary only wlien the inflanunation 



