434 History of Animal Plagues. 



which first attacked many pheasants reared in a beautiful garden 

 near Fulda, some of which I found when they were nearly 

 dead. When the diseased were examined, their gall-bladders 

 were found greatly distended with yellow bile, which passed 

 through its pores, and tinged the neighbouring tissues; if the 

 game-keepers speak true, the whole of the body was saturated 

 with bile after death. Behold an argument for the disease being 

 a putrid bilious affection ! behold the harbinger of the putrid 

 epidemy of the human species now made known to us 1^ ^ 



Wirth evidently traces some connection between this out- 

 break and the * murie ' observed in France in the previous year, 

 for he says: 'The horse-plague, which prevailed in 1770 at 

 Champagne in France, and at Fulda in Germany, was an inflam- 

 mation of the lungs, or a typhus disease with lung compli- 

 cations, which destroyed a great multitude of horses,^ 



A contagious epizooty appeared in France amongst cattle, 

 which has been described by Bourgelat. It was apparently gan- 

 grene of the throat, but differed from the epizooty of 1762. 

 The disease appears to have concentrated itself chiefly in the 

 nasal cavities, and the upper parts of the respiratory and di- 

 gestive passages. Externally, nothing unusual was observable. 

 Bourgelat thus writes of the symptoms : ' The first day a very 

 great heat is felt in the horns, the ears, the extremities, and 

 nearly the whole of the body ; the pulse is quick and very 

 strong:, the eyes sufflised and discharging tears, and the con- 

 junctivae inflamed. The animal eats, but less than usual ; the 

 blood drawn in this state is covered in a short time after ex- 

 posure to the air by a pellicle of a rose colour, and about a line 

 in thickness. This becomes re-covered and hidden by thick 

 blood of a deep red hue. 



'■ On the second day there is a dry cough ; the pharynx and 

 the nasal cavities are slightly inflamed; the flanks are agitated; 

 the pulse announces a violent fever, and beats from sixty to 

 sixty-five and seventy times a minute; the heat becomes dry 

 and sharp ; the milk is cloudy and thicker than usual ; nausea 

 and loss of appetite are noticeable. 



^ Wdka?-d. Observations Medic, p. 5. ^ Wirth. Op. cit., p. 156. 



