History of Animal Plagues. 451 



5- 

 'The doctors have estabhshed their remedial measures to cure 

 this disease, on the notion that they knew its nature. Those 

 who look upon it as an inflammatory fever recommend bleeding, 

 and remedies of a soothing and cooling kind ; those who admit 

 a corruption of the blood have ordered febrifuge and stimulating 

 remedies, and those who consider it a putrid fever counsel the 

 administration of acids, and in Brandenburg wild apples have 

 been recommended as a specific. Others, again, have proposed 

 quinine, and others mercury, while the people have recourse in 

 general to incongruous compositions, and to old-fashioned 

 recipes. The ancients looked much to setons, to the root of 

 hellebore passed through the skin, so as to establish a long 

 suppuration. But it has been discovered by sad experience 

 in Holland and in England that these remedies are impotent; 

 all hope of curing this disease has been lost, and people are con- 

 tent to mitigate it by inoculation. We pass in silence the pre- 

 tended preservatives by which it is supposed animals arc insured 

 against the contagion, and to which no man of sense would give 

 any confidence, seeing that they are useless against the plague, 

 the small-pox, and other contagious diseases. 



6. 



' A long experience has taught us that remedies are useless 

 against the contagion. The beginning of the disease is nearly 

 imperceptible, and when the symptoms are manifested the cure 

 has become almost impossible. The use of remedies is otherwise 

 dangerous, for the infection is really communicated by the 

 breath and the exhalations ; we have a proof of this in the foul 

 smell attaching to the clothes of people who look after the dis- 

 eased beasts. We cannot hope to cure in a day a disease of so 

 serious a character; and thus the diseased creature which lives 

 in the same stable with other cattle, and feeds and drink w ith 

 them, may infect them during the time we are unsuccessfully try- 

 ing to cure it. These same exhalations may also lodge in the 

 clothes of those who go about them, and thus become danger- 

 ous to the animals vet in health. 



