;^66 History of Animal Plagues. 



cult; the appetite disappeared, and rumination became suspended; 

 and if death did not suddenly take place, the symptoms be- 

 came more serious ; the breathing became more troubled, the 

 prostration more marked ; the extremities began to experience 

 nervous twitchings and spasmodic movements, which appeared 

 to be accompanied with pain, and prevented their free extension. 

 The thirst was sometimes intense, and when so the animal often 

 had a suppression of urine and faeces. Usually, however, there 

 was diarrhoea, and the matters were tinged with blood. 

 Some moments before death the animal fell as if apoplectic, and 

 lay without feeling or without movement; a thick, adhesive 

 mucus flowed from the mouth and the nostrils ; an aphthous- 

 like appearance showed itself about the tongue; and those 

 animals which resisted the violence of the early sym ptoms, towards 

 the third week became covered with an eruption of pustules 

 about the neck and the back, which degenerated into mange. 



On opening the dead bodies, gangrenous patches were ob- 

 served in the abdominal viscera, and particularly on the spleen 

 and the third stomach [pmasas). Traces of inflammation, of 

 putridity, and of gangrene were always present. The blood con- 

 tained in the spleen was darker than in health; the gall-bladder 

 was always full of bile, and in it were frequently found calculi 

 of various sizes ; in some cases small worms were lodged in the 

 biliary canal ; in others the brain was softened, and the surface 

 of the lungs speckled with livid gangrenous spots. What was 

 reckoned the most extraordinary circumstance in these examin- 

 ations, was the great quantity of black bile constantly found in 

 the gall-bladder, and the calculi which they contained. In the 

 third compartment of the stomach there was nearly always pre- 

 sent a hard, arid, brown mass of food, looking as if it had been 

 baked and hardened by the intensity of the malady. The heart 

 was sometimes filled with polypoid concretions. ^ 



For France, out of the many writers at this period who de- 

 scribed the malady, I will only select a few. 



Chomel" regarded the disease as a malignant, pestilential, and 



^ Acta Havniensia, vol. ii. 



- Lettre d'un Medecin de Paris a un Medecin de province sur les Maladies des 

 Bestiaux. Journal des Savans. 1 745. 



