VOL. L.] I'HILOSOPHICAL TBANSACTIONS. 207 



one moment to determine, whether this disease be an eruptive fever, like the 

 small-pox, or not. 



Now if, as the Marquis has granted in both his memoirs, it be a general ob- 

 servation, that an eruption of pustules on some parts of the body, regularly 

 thrown out, digested, and dried, was the means used by nature to effect the 

 cure, and that in general the morbid matter did not affect the parotid, inguina 1, 

 or other glands, nor produce large carbuncles and abscesses, as the plague does : 

 nay more, since it was observed by the Marquis, that the difference between 

 the contagious distemper of 1745 and 1746, and of 1747 and 1748, was, that 

 in the former the salutary eruptions appeared, but in the latter were, as he justly 

 apprehended, checked by the excessive cold weather: and should it appear, that 

 by inoculation the same regular eruptive fever had been produced, with every 

 stage, and the same symptoms as arise in the small-pox; the nature of this dis- 

 temper will then be ascertained. Dr. L. then proceeds to state the accounts he 

 had received relative to the infection and inoculation of the cattle, and to offer 

 some observations on the experiments made at Issurtille. 



So long as the distemper had raged in Great Britain, not one attested proof 

 had been brought of any beast having this disease regularly more than once. He 

 made no doubt but these creatures might be liable to eruptions of different 

 kinds; but as all sorts of eruptions, says Dr. Mead, are not the small-pox nor 

 measles, so every pustule is not a sign of the plague. Through ignorance, or 

 fraud, persons might have been deceived in purchasing cattle, and have lost them, 

 as well in England as in the provinces of France mentioned by the Marquis; but 

 until a second infection be proved, the general opinion must prevail in this case, 

 as in the small-pox ; for though many have insisted on the same thing with regard 

 to the small-pox, yet a single instance, properly vouched and attested, had never 

 been produced, either after recovery from the natural way, or from inoculation ; 

 unless what was frequently the case with nurses and others attending the small- 

 pox, that is, pustules breaking out in their arms and face, be allowed as the 

 signs of a second infection. 



The farmers and graziers in Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, 

 Kent, and Yorkshire, whence Dr. L. had written testimonies, all agreed that 

 they never knew of a beast having the contagious distemper more than once. 

 In the first particularly, Mr. J. Mehew, the farmer mentioned in Dr. L.'s 

 essay, had then among his stock at Godmanchester 8 cows, which had the con- 

 tagious distemper the first time it appeared in Godmanchester in 1746. It 

 returned in 1749, ,1755, and 1756; the 2 last not so generally over the town as 

 the 2 former years. All these 4 times Mr. Mehew suffered by the loss of his 

 cattle; yet those 8 cows, which recovered in 1746, remained all the while the 

 distemper was in the farm the 3 years it raged, were in the midst of the sick 



