^T,2 History of Animal Plagiies. 



of the belly ; a restlessness, uneasiness on lying down, and defect of 

 power, through weakness, to stand, whence the legs are extended out- 

 wards, as it were, to prop the body j eruptions on various parts of the 

 body, but particularly about the flank and udder 3 miscarriage in preg- 

 nant cows 5 and, where the beasts are strong, hard tumours, like boils, 

 especially along the back on each side the bone felt under the pannicu- 

 lus carnosus, or outward skin, which frequently break and discharge 

 matter very fetid or stinking. 



' These symptoms go on, most of them augmenting, till the turn or 

 crisis of the disease. They then begin to decrease, and some degree of 

 appetite and chewing the cud to return, if the beasts recover. If other- 

 wise, the purging becomes greater, or, if there were none before, begins 

 with violence, and the dung passes off involuntarily, not only the anus 

 but the tail seeming to lose all power of action. The eruptions, if there 

 be any, flatten ; or the tumours, like boils, under the skin grow soft ; 

 and the strength seeming to be spent, the beast dies suddenly without 

 any other previous signs j or, in some cases, is violently convulsed, roars 

 loudly, throws out a large quantity of foam or froth from the mouth, 

 struggles hard, and tosses about the head with great force. 



' The second stage of the disease is seldom continued longer here 

 than three or four days, reckoning it, as above-mentioned, from the 

 fourth day after the first signs of the infection. So that the general 

 period of the distemper, from the first attack which was perceived to 

 the crisis or turn, according to the course of the distemper as it sub- 

 sisted here, may be accounted about seven or eight days.^ 



' The time of appearance of the first signs, after the infection is re- 

 received, is five or six days, rarely more, unless where the slightness of the 

 disease renders the symptoms so gentle that they do not become per- 

 ceptible till in an advanced period of it; but this cannot carry it beyond 

 the ninth or tenth day. 



'It is not to be understood, nevertheless, that in every beast which 

 has the murrain, all the above-enumerated appearances will be found. 

 For as different parts are affected in different subjects, the symptoms 



' In Holland, the period of the murrain from the first sensible marks of it to the 

 crisis or turn, is much longer than it appeared to be with us, and is most generally 

 found to be aliout twelve days. The reason of the variation of the disease in this 

 point betwixt Holland and here, lies in the superior strength of our cattle, which 

 enables nature in them to bring the disease to a crisis in so much less time. This 

 greater degree of strength in our cattle manifests itself, as we have remarked else- 

 where, in their more frequently throwing out eruptions in this disorder here than in 

 Holland, and in their not being susceptible of the infection, except after very bad 

 seasons, though less injurious epidemic causes render them so in that country. 



