EPIDEMIC TYPHUS AMONG CATTLE. 
489 
of which Italy was the chief theatre, an epizootic typhus appeared 
in some of the provinces of this beautiful country, and in the 
course of three years destroyed between three and four millions 
of cattle. In 1796 it broke out among the cattle forming the 
convoy of the French army occupying the borders of the Rhine. 
It propagated itself with frightful rapidity through all the de- 
partments in that part of France — it penetrated into Switzerland 
— it approached the gates of Paris. In the department of the 
Lower Rhine alone it destroyed 11,043 head of cattle ; and in the 
twenty-seven departments which it more or less devastated, it 
swept away 130,000 beasts, whose value was at least twelve 
millions of francs. 
About that period (1796) a calculation was made by Dr. 
Faust of the number of cattle that had been destroyed by this 
epidemic typhus in France and Belgium alone, and he estimated 
them at ten millions. 
In 1814 and 1815, the coalesced armies arrived in France, 
bringing in their train numerous Hungarian and German bul- 
locks, among whom this contagious typhus soon broke out: the 
malady was speedily communicated to the cattle of our own 
country, and in almost every department, except those occupied 
by the French army of the Loire, thousands of cattle were lost. 
These historical researches into the appearance of typhus, 
and the mortality which it has occasioned at different epochs, 
prove, 
1. That from 1711 to 1814 contagious typhus has mani- 
fested itself among cattle about once in twenty-three years. 
2. That on each occasion it seems to have derived its origin 
from Hungary. 
3. That it is by means of its contagious principle alone that 
it has been enabled to spread over so many parts of Europe. 
4. That whenever it has appeared, it has caused great mor- 
tality among cattle, &c. 
5. That on estimating the ten millions of cattle that died in 
France and Belgium alone, from 17L3 to 1796, to have been 
worth only 150 francs each, there was a loss of 175 millions of 
francs*. 
What an enormous sum — and to be abstracted from one 
source only of national wealth — agriculture! how injurious its 
effects on every other branch of commerce and of wealth ! how 
ruinous, at the time, to thousands of deserving individuals ! and 
* The loss of cattle in England in the two epidemics of 1715 and 1746 
could not be less than a million. More than eighty thousand were slaughtered 
by order of Government in the second epidemic, and thirty thousand died in 
Cheshire in six months. 
