FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE. 
223 
stock of the United Kingdom were more entirely exempt 
from infectious diseases than they had been for many years. 
With the cessation of the cattle plague, however, there 
came the revocation of those prohibitive orders, which had 
been so salutary in their influence upon the health of 
stock while in operation ; and almost at the same moment 
infectious diseases began to spread among cattle, sheep, and 
pigs. Mouth and foot disease re-appeared in the winter of 
1867, and the first animals which were seen with the disease 
in the lairs of the Metropolitan Market were English beasts. 
The spread of the disease at this time was not very rapid. 
Cases occurred in the metropolitan dairies, and also in various 
parts of the country ; but the malady was in w r hat may be 
called its normal state of prevalence, and continued in that 
state the w hole of the year 1868. During this period foreign 
animals also enjoyed a comparative freedom from the disease ; 
and very few seizures were made at the ports, and those 
principally in the spring of the year, by the Veterinary In- 
spectors of Customs ; and notwithstanding the unusual heat 
and drought of the summer of 1868, the disease did not 
extend from the few centres of infection which existed. 
Early in the present year the importation of diseased 
animals from different parts of the Continent commenced, 
and up to this period seizures of infected cargoes have been 
frequent. Information from abroad proves that foot and 
mouth disease has extended from Bohemia to Saxony, 
Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, European 
Turkey, and Switzerland. Infected cargoes have been 
landed at the different English ports from Hamburgh, 
Bremen, Geestermunde, Tonning, Husum, Rotterdam, Dort, 
Antwerp, Dunkirk, and Boulogne. 
Recently the malady has spread with remarkable rapidity 
in this country, in the metropolis and its suburbs, and also 
in distant parts of England and Scotland ; not following in 
all, or even in the majority of instances, the movement of 
infected cattle as the cattle-plague did, but appearing in 
places quite remote from the coast, and least likely to suffer 
from the passage of diseased foreign stock. All cattle landed 
in the port of London are confined to the area of the metro- 
politan district, and at all the outports they have been, for 
some time past, kept in the defined part until slaughtered. 
Nevertheless the mouth and foot complaint has made in 
the course of tw r o or three months such rapid progress as to 
have extended over more than half the counties of England. 
Reports of the extensive prevalence of the disease have 
been received from Middlesex, Cambridgeshire, Kent, Herts, 
