292 
THE LATE EPIDEMIC DISEASE IN FRANCE. 
eight or ten days, the animals, if not dead, are reduced to the 
lowest condition. In general, the cows who are the most ill 
with the mouth are those that are the least so with the feet 
and paps. 
In the greatest number of cases it is at the point of the tongue 
and on the tip that the phylactenae were found. They are almost 
the usual colour of the epidermis — transparent — more or less 
elevated, and of irregular forms. There is almost always one 
that appeared first between the cartilaginous muzzle and the skin 
of the upper lip. The others are scattered in the mouth, on the 
gums, on the lips, on the nose, and vary in their forms, their 
size, and their number. It is usually on the third or fourth day 
that these vesicles burst. They diffuse a whitish serosity, after 
which this portion of the epidermis falls off, and shews the fleshy 
membrane red and of the colour of blood. If the point of the 
tongue is touched, there remains on the hand a thick skin co- 
vered with nervous papillae, and resembling those which are 
peeled from a boiled tongue. This must cause considerable pain 
to the cow. These phylactenae or bladders, as M. Mathieu calls 
them, resemble burns occasioned by boiling water being thrown 
into the mouth. 
When the feet are sore at the same time as the mouth, it is 
also at the third or fourth day that this is found disseminated 
round and interposed between the hoofs, in quantity more or less 
considerable, with the vesicles as different in form as in size. 
They are prolonged sometimes under the whole of the sole, and 
detacji it, even round the circumference of the hoof. A humour of 
a yellowish white runs from these phylactenae of a sharpness like 
that among certain cows : the plantary pad is destroyed, and in 
the part which corresponds to it the bone is left naked. 
it will be an error to imagine that all four feet of an animal 
are equally diseased : this is not the case. Among several sub- 
jects some will have only one foot attacked ; in others two may 
be diseased, and usually these are the hind ones ; but the soreness 
is always greatest in one particular foot. 
In ordinary cases, and excepting those of which we have just 
spoken, it is seldom that, at the expiration of ten days, the cows 
do not again begin to feed. From that time the secretion of milk 
increases, and every appearance of the disease in the mouth and 
feet seems to disappear ; but then a disease of the teats appears 
or increases, and these organs are covered with pustules, which, 
more or less, assume a confluent character. 
In all the cow-houses of Bessin, when the mammary eruption 
had taken place, it was eight or fifteen days, or even three weeks, 
after the mouth and the feet were cured. The disease was very 
