DISEASES AND REMEDIES. 491 



MALIGNANT EPIDEMICS MUKRAIN, PLEUBO-PNEUMONIA, 



KINDEUrEST. 



We should hardly mention these terrible diseases, had not our 

 attention been recently called to them, by the late devastations 

 in the herds of British cattle, within the last two or three years, 

 to such extent, that the Congress of the United States, some 

 two years ago, by a solemn enactment, prohibited the importa- 

 tion of foreign cattle into our country, altogether. That law is 

 still in force, and possibly to the salvation of our own domestic 

 herds, which might otherwise have been endangered by impor- 

 tations, wliich, of late years, have been frequent. 



This disease, or diseases — for they are all malignant epidem- 

 ics — perhaps taking a more extreme type as circumstances may 

 govern, but all attended with a terrible fatality, has existed ou 

 the Eastern Continent, at various times, for some thousands of 

 years. Youatt gives an elaborate description of the disease. 

 The first we hear of it is in the Bible, (Exodus ix. 3-6,) when 

 the cattle of Egypt were smote with murrain as a punishment 

 for retaining the children of Israel in bondage. Profane writers, 

 as Homer, Hippocrates, Plutarch, Virgil, and others before 

 Christ, make mention of it, and it has existed in various coun- 

 tries of Asia, and Europe, down to the present day — not con- 

 tinuously, but at different periods — and been attended with 

 devastating fatality, sweeping, at times, the countries which it 

 ravaged, of almost all their herds. 



The lights of science and investigation have failed to give the 

 cause or origin of these epidemics ; but that they have been con- 

 tagious is certain, and the immediate extinction of the herds 

 affected with it has proved as yet its only certain cure. We 

 have not space to recount its ravages, even in England of late, 

 and can only allude to it in connection with what we have lately 

 known of it in our own country. " Murrain," as we understand 

 it in America, is only a casual disease, deadly enough whnn it 



