EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
225 
sides/ 5 he writes, “ between the torn tents, dead cattle are 
rotting, and no one thinks of removing the pest-bringing 
carcases. 55 
A perusal of the questions, to which allusion has been 
made, will show that, from the first, we were solicitous that 
the disease should not be confounded with pleuro-pneumonia ; 
and on every fitting occasion since then, and at the meetings 
of the Royal Agricultural Society in particular, we have 
endeavoured to point out the differences of the two epi- 
zootics. This has been the more needed because many 
agriculturists, and not a few medical men of eminence, as 
may be seen by the scientific periodicals, have fallen into the 
error of considering the disease to be pleuro-pneumonia in 
a more active form. Indeed, there is no reason to doubt that 
cc contagious typhus 55 is identical with the malady which 
appeared somewhat suddenly in England, and first in the 
neighbourhood of London, in 1744, and which gradual^ ex- 
tended itself over the length and breadth of the land, des- 
troying its hundreds of thousands of cattle, and continuing 
its devastating effects with more or less severity down 
to 1752. 
No correct estimate can be formed of the immense loss 
which the country then sustained ; but it was ascertained by 
one of the Commissioners appointed by the Government of 
the day, that in Nottinghamshire alone 40,000 head of cattle 
perished in six months, and in Cheshire upwards of 30,000 
in the same space of time. 
Its introduction here has been pretty generally attributed 
to the importation of two diseased calves from Holland, by a 
farmer at Poplar ; a circumstance which should put us on the 
alert, seeing that week by week we are now importing upon 
an average upwards of sixteen hundred head of foreign cattle? 
and that many of them are coming direct from the infected 
districts. It has also been ascertained that the malady had 
been prevailing for two to three years in Denmark, Holland, 
and Germany, prior to its appearance here; a parallel of 
which we have in its present existence in Konigsburgh, 
Mecklenburgh, and other Prussian States. Upon its out- 
