3^8 History of Animal Plagues. 



any avail in it. By the apparent tendency to a paralytic state, which is 

 shown in the first period of the murrain, there is room to conclude 

 that such a stimulus might come within the intention of cure. But 

 whether it would be adequate to the indications, or trivial in its effects, 

 can only be known from a large basis of observations. At all adventures, 

 the difficulty attending the application of bhsters to the diseased cattle 

 by such persons as must have the treatment of them in general, ren- 

 ders their use a very untit means of relief in the murrain. 



' Rowels, setons, pegging, and caustics have been in their turn vainly 

 employed in the murrain. It must be admitted, nevertheless, that nature 

 sometimes throws the morbid matter on a part already diseased by a 

 wound so made, and in that case renders it the means of a critical 

 discharge, as we see happen in other contagions. But this will rarely 

 be the case, and where it may there is always a sufficient degree of strength 

 to produce an eruption, which would answer the same end. In any 

 other circumstances, the discharge from these drains can be of no serv- 

 ice towards the cure of the murrain. For they must know very little 

 ot physiology and the history of diseases, who imagine a purulent dis- 

 charge can be of any consequence in them, unless at the due period it 

 be converted into a critical one by a deposit of the morbid matter on 

 the part. In all other views this kind of evacuation rather impedes 

 than promotes the cure of the murrain, as it tends to weaken and ex- 

 haust the subject, and consequently to promote ihe prevalence of the 

 contagion over nature. 



' Munditication, performed by extraordinary cleansings and rubbing 

 the skin of the beasts, has had great stress laid upon it by some who 

 have undertaken the cure of the murrain. But it is admitted by Pro- 

 fessor Camper and others, who have seen it much practised, to be of 

 no avail. Indeed, the effects must be too minute to have any material 

 consequence in a disease of so violent a nature, and if such laborious 

 and constant cleansings, rubbings, &c., as are recommended were service- 

 able, the performing them would be impracticable where there are a 

 great number of cattle infected, without more trouble or expense tlian 

 the chance of benefit from them would countervail, 



'The inefficiency of the above-enumerated various supposed remedies 

 for the murrain are less to be regretted, because a great part of them 

 would be attended with such expense and trouble as would render the 

 general use inexpedient. And indeed the same may be said of all of 

 them according to the manner they have been prescribed by those who 

 have recommended them, in which several always, and for the most part 

 many of them, have been combined together. Whatever method of cure 

 is proposed to be actually serviceable in this disease, it must be practicable. 



