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THE VETERINARIAN, OCTOBER 1, 1870. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
CATTLE PLAGUE ON TIIE CONTINENT. 
Month after month we have had to record the progress 
of the rinderpest in Poland, Galicia, Transylvania, Hungary, 
Podolia, and other adjacent countries. The pest is near its 
home in those regions, but beyond the interest which the 
subject may be presumed to have for the scientific patholo- 
gist, there is probably very little importance attached by the 
general public to the intelligence of the spread of an in- 
fectious disease among cattle in countries which do not 
directly supply us with animal food. 
Germany is the country through which cattle from infected 
provinces have to pass in order to reach a shipping port, 
and Western Europe relies chiefly on the perfect system of 
cordons which Prussia, as the head of the North German 
Confederation, establishes when cattle plague approaches 
the frontiers. So long, then, as these States remain free 
from the disease, all importing or transmitting countries 
lying westward of them rest in comparative peace ; but cattle 
plague in Germany is a source of real danger to all the rest 
of Europe. 
As a matter of history it is known that the cattle 
plague follows the course of armies in times of war. It 
is not true, however, that there is sufficient in the defective 
sanitary arrangements of camp life to produce a specific 
disease, although there is enough to foster and propagate the 
malady when it occurs. The virus must first of all be intro- 
duced, or whatever other form of death may arise from the 
unsanitary conditions in which the animals are placed, it will 
not be death from cattle plague. 
There is no mystery to unravel in reference to the origin 
of the present outbreak of cattle plague in Germany. The 
disease existed in permanence at a possible distance, and it 
only required that the country which protects itself by an 
incessant watching of its frontier should have its attention 
