694 
MR. CHERRY’S LECTURE 
predisposition was aggravated by the blighted condition of the food 
on which the animal subsisted. The disease will remain, for a 
long period, as it were in a quiescent state. Thus we find that 
the ox, for example, though it has not been suspected of having 
any disease, if slaughtered, will sometimes exhibit strong traces of 
that peculiar deposit which is one of the most striking charac- 
teristics of the disease. We find the skin often partaking of the 
disease in a peculiar manner ; and so attack after attack is made, 
until finally there is a general break up of nature. The attempt 
to get any thing like an universal remedy to meet so universal a 
disease must, I think, be in vain. Nature has given us a very 
large laboratory wherein to choose ; and she would not have given 
us so large a laboratory, if she had not intended that every type 
of disease should have its appropriate remedy. What is curative 
in one stage of disease is deleterious in another; hence we must 
not expect to find any remedy which will be universally salutary 
in its effects. But if we give greater comfort to the animal — if 
we remove it to some place where it will not be subject to dele- 
terious influences, by pursuing such a course, we shall go far 
towards the removal of the malady. 
Looking at the Continent, we find that a disease of a similar 
character had existed there for a long period, and had, in fact, 
become hereditary. Now, we know very well that there the same 
amount of attention has not usually been paid to animals as has been 
given to them in this kingdom. The result has been that the dis- 
ease has gone on increasing from year to year, until, at last, it has 
become a positively recognised disease, existing as a matter of 
course ; and if we go on in the same way as we have done for 
some years past, it will, I fear, become the same in this country. 
That the disease is in itself contagious I cannot for a moment 
believe ; but that the malaria thrown off from a diseased animal 
may have the effect of producing disease in another animal is, I 
think, not to be denied. If you take an animal, and place it in 
a stall-shed, that animal, if in perfect health, will resist for a long 
period the influences of bad atmosphere ; but if it have the pre- 
disposing causes, it will soon acquire a similar disease to that of 
the animals in its neighbourhood. We find that a number of ani- 
mals placed in the same shed are generally attacked in the same 
manner : this disease will run rapidly through the whole of them ; 
but no one has ever been able to shew that the several animals at- 
tacked were previously in good health, and, I believe, it will gene- 
rally be found that the disease has existed for a long period before 
being manifested. I have often been able to trace disease in an 
animal before he arrived at that state in which the disease is'easily 
recognised. A process of emaciation going on in the animals 
