LETTER BY DR. GREENHOW. 
279 
taneously developed only in Bessarabia, Podolia, and other 
countries of Southern Russia, from which it is never absent, 
and whence it frequently spreads by contagion into Poland, 
and sometimes into Prussia and Austria. 
“The most stringent measures are employed by the Russo- 
Polish authorities, and by the Governments of Austria and 
Prussia, to exclude this form of murrain from their respective 
territories. A regulation was published in Poland on the 
9th of May, 1856, ordering the indiscriminate slaughter of all 
beasts that should exhibit any symptoms of the disease, under 
which, according to a recent return, 20,000 animals have 
already been slaughtered. 
“Independent of these measures in the interior of the 
country, quarantine stations have been established on the 
Russo-Polish frontier, where beasts coming from the East 
are detained for three weeks. Similar measures for the ex- 
clusion and extirpation of the disease, should it show itself 
within those countries, have long been in force on the fron- 
tiers of Austria and Prussia. In Austria the infected cattle 
are immediately killed as soon as they show any appearance 
of the murrain, their companions being kept in quarantine; 
and regulations still more stringent are enforced in Prussia, 
for both the diseased animals and all other beasts that have 
been in contact with them are there killed and buried eight 
feet under ground, quicklime being thrown into the pits. 
“These regulations have been most sternly enforced, and 
not only has the importation of cattle from Poland, where 
the murrain is at present believed to exist, been prohibited, 
but rags, hides, hoofs, hay, wood, and similar articles likely 
to have been in any way connected with cattle, and all 
persons suspected of having transactions with cattle, have 
been forbidden to cross the frontier. To enforce these regu- 
lations detachments of troops have been stationed along the 
frontier at all the points of egress from Poland below Thorn. 
“Notwithstanding these precautions, the murrain occa- 
sionally passes into Austria and Prussia, and intelligence 
has been received by our Government that it has recently 
been imported into both these monarchies. It has been 
conveyed into Silesia, in the neighbourhood of Breslau and 
Oppeln, by means of diseased cattle said to have been pur- 
chased in Galicia, but has not spread into any other Prussian 
province, and has, in fact, thus far been confined to the oxen 
of the infected herd. Most effective measures have been 
taken to arrest the disease, c and, judging from the experience 
of last year, there is every reason to hope that its propagation 
will be prevented, and its extinction secured. 5 
