524 
CATTLE PESTILENCE. 
Wurtemburg and Bavaria, it is true, held themselves upon 
their guard, but they had not yet adopted any measures of 
prevention. 
It was only at Vienna that the Commissioners could find 
any traces of the scourge. They learned that the typhus had 
that time taken its rise in the Russian steppes, where it was 
still making great ravages ; and that it was during the 
summer of 1844 that it had introduced itself into Gallicia, 
and had progressively extended towards the west, with the 
large droves brought by commerce to the great fairs of 
Olmutz, from whence it had spread itself, by the dispersion 
of the animals purchased there, into a great part of Moravia, 
Lower Austria, and Bohemia. The butchery of the Austrian 
States, in fact, slaughter annually about 100,000 head of the 
race from the steppes ; and it is by this means that the 
disease penetrates into the country. But on the arrival of 
the Commissioners it was rapidly decreasing in Moravia, and 
quite extinct in Lower Austria; whilst, temporarily stopped 
in Bohemia, it had re-appeared there afterwards with fresh 
virulence. These gentlemen repaired thither at once, and 
were soon able to give an account of the causes of this 
relapse of the evil. 
There is only one remedy employed against the typhus, 
and that is an absolutely efficacious one. Immediately that 
the disease is declared in a country, they surround the farm, 
the commune, or the canton infected, with a cordon of troops, 
with orders not to allow any of the bovine race to pass out ; 
they then put to death and bury all the sick and even sus- 
pected animals; and at the end of some weeks the disease is 
stifled. 
The typhus had entered Bohemia by Moravia. The 
veterinary surgeon sent by the Government had prescribed 
the ordinary means, and the disease had made no further 
progress, and had almost wholly disappeared. But some 
surgeons were desirous of making a post-mortem examination 
of the dead animals ; and, from the internal injuries w hich 
they observed, they concluded that the disease was no other 
than abdominal typhus which we find amongst mankind, 
wffiich originates spontaneously and has no contagious 
character. 
This novel opinion, supported by names of considerable 
weight in the country, was rapidly disseminated. The 
faculty of Prague embraced this opinion, which favoured the 
possibility of the spontaneous rise of the typhus independent 
of the steppes, entertained by the French authors also who 
had written upon that disease ; and the proprietors, w ho 
