History of Animal Plagues. 327 



particular symptom, which is only when some internal part is inflamed 

 by the deposit of the matter, yet such case would be desperate, and the 

 evacuation would, in other respects, promote those effects that lead to 

 fatal consequences. Bleeding for prevention of the infection, though 

 not enumerated in the preceding view of the means used for. that end, 

 has yet been recommended by some physicians, and frequently practised. 

 But on the same principle, of exposing the beasts to the force of the 

 disease by weakening them, it is of the same bad tendency as when 

 used for the cure. Indeed, it does not in this case so generally do harm. 

 For when it happens not to be performed nearly at the time of the 

 beast's taking the infection, the cattle, except those which are naturally 

 weak, recover their strength again, and the evacuation has, therefore, 

 no consequence with regard to the distemper. 



' Purging has been frequently tried as a remedy against the murrain, 

 iu all the periods of the disease. There is evidently the same objection 

 to it as has made above to bleeding, since it undoubtedly conduces to 

 weaken and exhaust the beast, and, consequently, to render nature 

 less able to resist the force of the contagion. It is also from other reasons 

 improper in this disease by whichever of the two courses, a diarrhoea or 

 eruptions, nature seeks to produce a critical discharge of the morbid 

 matter. Where there is a tendency to eruptions, as for the most part 

 is found in England, this evacuation would necessarily make a deriva- 

 tion and endanger the stopping its progress j and, indeed, not only with 

 us but in Italy, according to Lancisi, " A looseness is an unfavourable 

 symptom and denotes the weakness of the subject." In Holland it is 

 frequent, and the cattle do recover with it. But where there is a dis- 

 position to it, or it is already begun, medicines which promote the same 

 evacuation are certainly not proper, as they either bring it on before the 

 due time or increase it, if already come on, to a degree that is beyond 

 what the strength of the beast can bear. This, though not, perhaps, in 

 every instance, must yet be the case in the greatest part. The most 

 judicious observers agree, moreover, in condemning the use of purges in 

 this disease, from an actual experience of their bad effects, and the 

 adopting it has been certainly one source of the ill success which has 

 resulted in the attempts made to cure the murrain. 



' Blisters have been also tried in this disease, but not in so extensive a 

 manner as to afford the means of determining how fir they may be of 



ation on the real phenomena. What we have before quoted was tlie result of 

 theoretic reasonings founded on presumed principles, and the supj^osed aulhority 

 of Sydenham, <S:c., in points where in reality no just analogy subsisted. Professor 

 Camper wholly disapproves of bleeding in this disease from an extensive observation 

 of its effects. 



