Foot-and-Mouth Disease : its History and Teachings. 
3 
rapidly to Bohemia, Saxony, and Prussia, afterwards to Mecklen- 
burg, and also through Germany, Holland, and France. 
The inference is plain that foot-and-mouth disease overflowed 
into England from the reservoir of contagion in Europe, just as 
on a late occasion it was, without doubt, carried from England 
into Ireland. Whether it appeared first on our west coast, as 
Professor Fergusson stated, or in the suburbs of London, as was 
first reported, the malady certainly came at a time when the im- 
portation of live animals was prohibited by law, the prohibitive 
statute not having been repealed until July 1842. 
With our present knowledge we can readily understand how 
the contagion might have arrived by mediate conveyance ; for, 
disregarding the teaching of Dr. Layard, who, as far back as 
1747, urged, respecting another foreign murrain, that of all 
cautions, prohibiting the importation of infected cattle and 
hides is of the greatest importance ; so foolish and ignorant were 
Ave at this period, that, whilst foot-and-mouth disease was raging 
on the other side of the German Ocean, we were all the time 
importing " untanned foreign hides," not disinfected in any 
way. In 1838, the imports of such hides amounted to 
346,348 cwts. 
It is quite possible that the contagion reached our shores by a 
diseased animal, for although prohibition was the law, it was 
very common for milch cows, brought for the ship's use, to be 
seen at our ports, where there was often no obstacle to prevent 
the sale of such an animal. Or, it may be true, as has been 
stated, that Professor Youatt traced the first outbreak of the 
malady to certain diseased specimens of the bovine species 
imported for the Zoological Gardens in 1839, immediately 
after which the complaint was discovered at Stratford, in the 
suburbs of the Metropolis, from whence some diseased animals 
were sent into Smithfield Market. In the next month, September, 
the disease was discovered, not only in the Smithfield Market, 
but among cattle near Loddon, in Norfolk. From various 
centres the infection was carried into Scotland and Ireland ; 
so virulent was the disease, that it is recorded, " baskets-full 
of hoofs of swine and sheep were often swept up after the 
Smithfield Market was over." 
That the formidable disease was, with so much complacency, 
permitted to exist in our midst for the long period of forty years 
seems, with our present knowledge, simply astounding. There 
is no reason for believing that these Islands were ever com- 
pletely clear of the contagion, from the date of its first introduc- 
tion, until the year 1880. 
The first invasion of the contagion, in 1839, reached the 
height of its ravage in 1840 and 1841, followed by two years of 
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