History of Animal Plag7ces. 541 



this epidemic^ and this fact is adduced to favour the opinion of 

 those who assert that it is not brought here by contagion, but is 

 generated spontaneously. In the months of March and April, 

 a remarkable disease appeared among cats in London and other 

 parts of England, and it is said that in three parishes of London, 

 within fourteen days, above five thousand died. This was 

 probablv the same disease ; which had raged among these 

 animals in nearly all the towns of New England and New York 

 in this year. It seems to have been confined to the towns, 

 as nothing has been heard of it from the country. In France 

 the same happened in this year, as we learn from the Bordeaux 

 newspapers. As, however, in these years no yellow fever was 

 present in any of these places, except Philadelphia, the opinion 

 that that malady always follows the sickness in cats is seriously 

 shaken.^ ^ It was calculated that five thousand cats perished 

 at Philadelphia, and four thousand at New York.'^ ' This cat 

 distemper appeared in Philadelphia as early as June (1797), and 

 proceeded northward and eastward, like the catarrh of 1789. In 

 August it was very fatal in New York, and in the course of the 

 summer and autumn, it spread destruction among those animals 

 over the Northern States.' ^ 



In London, the cat epizooty manifested itself during the 

 months of March and April, 1797. 'In England a pestilence 

 among cats swept away those animals in thousands. It seems 

 that this disease began as early as April, and succeeded an epi- 

 demic catarrh among the human race. The same cat-plague was 

 soon after epidemic in France.'"' In Ireland it was also observed. 

 'The feline race in this country are dying in numbers by a mere 

 murrain similar to that which sometimes seizes and spreads among 

 the black cattle; for some of the skins of the cats which died of 

 the disorder now prevalent among them, being dried,'and the hair 

 taken offby lime, appeared full of small holes caused by numbers 

 of worms or insects that thus penetrate ; when seized with the 

 distemper the poor animals appear to be in the greatest agony.'* 



From the commencement to the cud of Septen)ber, seven 



' Erdmann. Das Gelbe Fieber zu Philadelphia, &c., p. lo. 



2 New York Medical Repository, vol. i. '' Webster. Op. cit. 



i IljiJ. * Hibernian Magazine. 



