22 
PLEUROPNEUMONIA. 
more of the deadening influence of quackery. I could enumerate 
a great number of cases of various diseases that have had a fatal 
termination, that might have been otherwise, or been brought 
round and cured, if they had been attended to by skilful and upright 
practitioners : I say that I could recite a great number of these 
cases, but it would be useless to do so. Every regular practitioner 
has seen enough himself, to his sorrow, especially of country pre- 
tenders ; indeed, since the commencement of that direful disease, 
pleuro-pneumonia, an innumerable host of empirics have sprung 
lip from all ranks and grades of persons. There are in this county 
several farmers whom I know, who pretend to have found out 
never-failing cures for that mysterious and fatal disease. There is 
one farmer not far hence who pretends that he has saved a great 
number of his own stock by administering a quantity of castor oil, 
treacle, and urine. He has sounded it through the country far 
and wide ; and some persons, owners of stock, have been fools 
enough to believe him, and have consequently lost a great many 
cows. One poor fellow I know lost twelve or thirteen in a short 
time, and never tried any thing else but the above-mentioned rub- 
bish, being fully persuaded that if that could not perform a cure 
nothing else could. There is another, who has received from a 
distant friend a recipe for the above disease, which he says is, and 
has been, a never-failing remedy either as a preventive or cure. 
This fellow actually thought so much of his invaluable recipe, 
that he sent it to the printer and got a great number of copies of it 
printed, and sent them to almost all the farmers far and near. I saw 
one of them, but unfortunately I have forgotten some of the ingre- 
dients of it : the principal ones were — one ounce of Epsom salts, 
half an ounce of sulphur, one ounce of turmeric, one gill of linseed 
oil, and two or three other strange things, which I now forget. 
What could such a compound do for a cow, when it is scarcely 
strong enough for a human being if the oil was omitted ? — and if 
enough, it is not suited to the disease which it is meant to cure. 
There are also a great number of ignorant and drunken itinerant 
quacks going about the country, pretending to cure all before them 
on the principle of “ no cure no pay and, no matter what ails a 
cow, they declare it to be the new disease (pleuro-pneumonia), if 
it is only a slight case of cold. They find a great many willing 
dupes among the country farmers, and if they happen by mere 
chance (for it is nothing else) to cure a beast, they charge a good 
sum, and that makes up for all they lose at other times. They do 
occasionally perform a cure on some petty case of cold, which they 
will call the disease ; or rather, I should say, the owner generally 
cures the complaint by kind nursing during the time the beast is 
undergoing the pretended curative process of the quack, and then 
