History of Animal Plagues. 2)'},'}) 



vary accordingly, particularly in the last stage ; and the natural or casual 

 habit of the beast, as to strength, age, and pregnancy, makes likewise a 

 considerable alteration, both as to the kind and the degree of the effects of 

 the contagion. The symptoms of the first stage, except the costiveness, 

 constantly attend, however, in a greater or less degree j and the greatest 

 part of those of the second stage follow in a more or less violent man- 

 ner. The discharge from the nose and eyes is very general ; and 

 scarcely ever wanting in those beasts which recover. The purging and 

 swelling of the belly are also very frequent ; and almost always occur 

 in those beasts which die. The eruptions and hard swellings like boils 

 are likewise very common here ' in those which recover. 



' On the whole, 'therefore, by a due observation of the manner in 

 which beasts seem affected, when several are seized with an unknown 

 disease at nearly the same time and place, it may be determined, on 

 very good grounds, \\'hen the contagion has been introduced. The 

 hanging down of the head and stretching out of the neck, with other 

 signs of weakness, coming on in the first stage ; and followed by the 

 insensibility, tremblings, eruptions in the flank and udder, or hard 

 swellings like boils along the back, and breaking out or scabbiness 

 about the nose and lips, in the second stage j may be looked upon as 

 peculiar symptoms which characterize the disease, and leave little 

 room to doubt of its presence where they appear. 



' In order, nevertheless, to obtain a more positive certainty in any 

 case where there is reason to apprehend, from beasts having died in the 

 manner and with the symptoms above described, that the infection has 

 been brought to any place, it may be further proper to examine the 

 carcases of such beasts by opening them 5 and if it be as supposed, the 

 following appearances, or most of them, will present themselves. This 

 examination must, however, be confined to such as die from the natural 

 course of the distemper ; and not extended to such as are killed, or have 

 been subjected to medicinal treatment j because the disease has not 



' Tliough eruptions were very frequent in the murrain wliile it prevailed here, 

 yet they are much less common, as has been above intimated, in Holland, and other 

 low and damp countries, where the cattle are habitually weaker. When they do 

 appear there, they are also different, for the most part, from those found in our cat- 

 tle. For instead of lieing on the back, and large like other boils, they are generally 

 about the flank and udder ; and are less, flatter, and softer. The general crisis of 

 the disease, in such case, is not by eruiHion, but by diarrhtea or looseness, which 

 was found here, on the contrary, to lie mostly a bad symptom. This is not, how- 

 ever, constant. Kor there are instances of beasts which do well in I Icjjland w ithout 

 a diarrhoea ; and there were some here of those which recovered with il. But the 

 crisis, nevertheless, is here by far the most fre(|uently an eruption, either on the 

 back or about the nose and lips ; and in those countries a diarrhoea. 



