History of Animal Plagues. 469 



and twelve which he had inoculated, and the second experi- 

 mentalist, out of ninety-four, was able to keep alive forty-five 

 animals. But in Holland it was generally believed, as has been 

 said, that Camper's experiments in inoculation tended very 

 much to keep the disease longer in the country, and often to 

 transfer it to other districts which might have escaped. 



Vicq-d'Azyr has steeped pledgets of tow which had imbibed 

 the virus of the disease, in oils and aromatic fluids, and he has 

 exposed others similarly contaminated to the action of sulphure- 

 ous acid and to gaseous hydrochloric acid, as well as to liquid 

 ammonia, and yet found that these substances did not destroy 

 the contagious properties of the poison ; for when the pledgets 

 were brought into contact w^th the body of an ox or cow, they 

 developed the disease as easily as they would have done before. 

 The same physician has attempted, though unsuccessfully, to 

 produce the malady by puncturing the skin in several places with 

 a scalpel dipped in the pus from sick animals ; and he came to 

 the conclusion that the aflection was not communicable by this 

 means. Permanent cohabitation with the diseased beast appeared 

 to favour the propagation of the epizooty, and he observes that 

 it was useless to attempt to ward off the disease by rubbing over 

 the skins of the healthy cattle with oil, with a view to cover the 

 pores against the entrance of the contagious particles; for the 

 disease attacked them just as promptly as if they had not been 

 so dealt with, because the poison entered the system by the 

 lungs. He saw, in Condomois, the oxen of a pious charitable 

 lady, who deemed it not only a pleasure but a duty to till the 

 ground for those unfortunate people who had lost all their stock 

 by the epizooty, and was informed that these useful creatures had 

 resisted the contagion, which was raging on every side of them, 

 and against which no jirecautions had been taken. It was 

 imagined that a most likely means of saving a large number of 

 animals would be to export all the healthy from a country where 

 the disease raged to another where infection had not existed for 

 a long time ; and with a view to put this supposition to the test 

 a great quantity were driven fioni Condomois to JVlontreab 

 where they were kept for many nionths ; but as the stables had 

 had not been disinfected, or were iniperl'cctly so, they were 



