284 Opinions on Epidemics and Epizootics. 



OPINIONS ON EPIDEMICS AND EPIZOOTICS. 



In our September number we published a paper on the " Cattle 

 Plague and Scientific Investigation," since which, up to the 

 date of appointing a Eoyal Commission, at the beginning of 

 October, the Government has indulged in much restrictive 

 legislation, without doing anything to test the accuracy of the 

 theories which its veterinary advisers have propounded. We 

 believe that the Privy Council have collected a vast quantity of 

 information of a miscellaneous sort ; but one obvious duty of 

 that body, from the commencement of its action in reference 

 to the cattle plague, was to organize an inquiry into the pro- 

 bable origin of the disorder. If it could be proved to be simply 

 and purely an importation from Russia, and only to appear in 

 this country after germs of the disease had been distributed 

 through the agency of imported animals, and if it could be farther 

 proved that restrictive measures could prevent its spread, then 

 the only limit to such measures ought to be the practicability 

 of their execution. This theory is acted upon in some parts of 

 the Continent, where the medical authorities appear to know as 

 little about the matter as our own, and where despotic prin- 

 ciples of Government preclude all consideration of individual 

 liberty and right. The Earl of Clarendon, in a speech at Watford, 

 after alluding to the restrictive measures which the Privy Council 

 was trying to enforce, said, u I own that if we had lived in a 

 despotic country very different measures would have been 

 taken. Every suspected district would have had a cordon of 

 soldiers placed round it, every animal would have been killed, 

 and every man suspected of violating the regulations would 

 have been put into prison. So stringent are ihe regulations in 

 Germany, that only a few days ago a stuffed wolf was prevented 

 from crossing the frontier, for fear of spreading the contagion ! M 

 This is the sort of proceeding which the English Government 

 is invited to adopt by its veterinary advisers, and it only stops 

 short of such monstrous absurdities because the temper of the 

 people would not allow them to be carried out. Weil might 

 Sir E. Bulwer Lytton exclaim, " It is not by indiscriminate 

 slaughter, it is not by adding famine to pestilence, that a 

 Government can be hailed as our protector, or scieuce received 

 as our guide." 



If the reader will refer to our previous article in the 

 September number ho may see the strong resemblance between 

 the notions now entertained by ultra-conlagionists, and par- 

 tially adopted by the Government, and those notions concern- 

 ing cholera, which raged like a plague, amongst the College of 

 Physicians in 1831. Professor Simouds, the Government 



