619 
ON THE PRESENT EPIZOOTIC AMONG CATTLE. 
By Mr. Thomas Sarginson, Appleby. 
Cases of the Epizootic Influenza have been occurring in this 
neighbourhood through the whole of the last spring and summer. 
But the number of them have lately been rapidly increasing, so 
much so, that, at the present time, the principal part of my cattle 
practice consists in the treatment of this disease. I must confess 
that there has no malady occurred in my practice that has more 
perplexed me than this has done ; not so much in discovering the 
seat of the disease, as in successfully treating it. 
This malady steals on insidiously, doing, as it proceeds, alrpost 
irreparable mischief ; while the owner, not being apprehensive 
of the danger of the first attack, until experience teaches him, 
suffers, perhaps, two or three days to elapse, or even more if 
danger is not then sufficiently apparent to himself, before he so 
much as thinks of employing a practitioner. It is to this cause 
that I ascribe, chiefly, both the fatality of the disease and the 
great difficulty that we too often experience in effecting a cure. 
When the breathing has become so laborious as to extort from 
the animal, at every act of expiration, a low, or often a loud, grunt, 
and other symptoms have become so urgent as to create alarm in 
the mind of the, too frequently, careless or covetous owner, I am 
satisfied, at least so far as my knowledge of the treatment of it at 
the present extends, that it has generally rivetted itself so firmly, 
and made such ravages in the parts diseased, as to be beyond 
the reach of any remedial or medicinal measure to eradicate. 
I am not of opinion that the disturbance in the digestive sys- 
tem is the first and principal evil ; but I believe that it is primarily 
inflammation of the mucous membranes in the superior parts of 
both the respiratory and the digestive organs, accompanied, as is 
regularly the case in such attacks, with a low typhous fever. 
When the inflammation has more widely extended itself, the 
serous membranes, from the intimate alliance subsisting between 
them and the mucous membranes, become an easy prey to the 
extending inflammation. The action of the capillaries being mor- 
bidly excited to a considerable extent, speedily terminates in 
weakness of these vessels ; and, as a natural consequence of this, 
an effusion of serum into various cavities of the body ensues. 
The earliest symptoms of this malady very prominently shew 
the existence of disease in the digestive system. The owner 
rarely discovers any ailment in the animal, if a milch cow, until 
the secretion of milk is either greatly diminished in quantity, or 
