I 



History of Animal Plagues. 453 



'We begin by disabusing the public of the idea that the 

 pneumonia {Ja Fidmonic) is not a contagious disease. This out- 

 rageous idea even conies from some savants; there are those, too, 

 who rob the plague of its contagious power. I do not pretend 

 to say that the skin of an infected beast preserves its contagious 

 properties for a long time after death ; experiments on this 

 matter, which deserve attention, have been made in France. It 

 is necessary, nevertheless, to remember that the plague attaches 

 itself by preference to the wool and the hair of animals, that it 

 may be transported by these matters, and that they will spread 

 the contagion to other towns and countries free from the con- 

 tagion. It is, then, possible that the empoisoned exhalations of 

 the diseased beast attach themselves to the hairs of the animals 

 which go near it. It is at least certain in our country, that as 

 often as the disease is manifested amongst cattle, and when it 

 has been traced to its source, it has been found that a beast 

 which had been purchased in the market of some suspected 

 place, or which had been brought from some infected locality, 

 has carried the contagion with it to the new centre. Sometimes, 

 also, the cattle of our regions have been depastured with those 

 of a neighbouring infected country. It is very probable that, at 

 other times, the air of the infected mountains has spread the dan- 

 gerous exhalations over our country. We believe we have ob- 

 served that the healthy cattle which had smelled those that were 

 diseased have shown, a few hours after, traces of the contagion. 

 It is known that the ship from Sidon brought the plague to 

 Marseilles, and that the bull which was taken from Hungary to 

 Padua in 171 1, took with it the fearful contagion which first 

 ravaged Italy, and then nearly the half of Europe. It thus 

 appears that the plague of man and the Cattle Plague take 

 their origin in hot countries, that they can infect temperate 

 regions, and that they are gradually destroyed during the cold 

 of some rigorous winter. That which is yet a better proof 

 that the pneumonia is perpetuated by infection, as the plague is, 

 is the manner in which we can confine it in suspected places, 

 and by cutting o{[' all conm)unication between the stables in- 



