160 
The Poisoning of Cattle with Lead, popularly known as 
Staggers or Head Disease. Read before the Veterinary 
Medical Association , Edinburgh , 1847. WITH AN APPENDIX 
and Additional Notes. By M. Cuming, V.S., Ellon. 
Pamphlet 8vo, pp. 28. Avery, Aberdeen ; Sutherland and 
Knox, Edinburgh. 
A MEDICAL man never experiences greater satisfaction than when 
his anxious searches after the origin or cause of some fatal sporadic or 
endemic disease among living beings, be they men or animals, have 
in the end been crowned with success. Having made the desired 
discovery, he exclaims in ecstasy, J'ai decouvert le pot aux roses ! 
He feels as though he had the lives of those still living in health in 
the region of the pestiferous agent at his command; while he loses 
his regret for those that have fallen victims to it in the joy he ex- 
periences at their dead bodies having auspiciously furnished him 
with the knowledge by which he is empowered to save others 
from the same grave. The disease, the subject of the pamphlet 
before us, had been rife, and as fatal as rife, in the part of the 
country in which Mr. Cuming practised. During May and June 
— 45, his attention was first called to it. Ten or twelve cases of 
what were called “staggers, or head disease” occurred, which at 
the time appeared to him “ most anomalous.” Animals were taken 
unwell, from being slightly became alarmingly ill, and in from 
thirty to sixty hours afterwards were dead corpses. And to render 
matters worse, their opened bodies exhibited but the appearance 
of lesions of too trivial a nature to warrant deductions from them 
of any practical or useful description. Although there was not 
that uniformity of symptoms and post-mortem relic, however, 
which epidemic diseases are wont to bewray, yet did there exist, 
on reflection, sufficient “points of coincidence” to suggest the in- 
ference that in all the same identical cause had been in operation. 
“ I had seen,” says Mr. Cuming, “ the same disease frequently 
before, although I had never had to do with treating it. It is no 
stranger in the district where I then practised, as I could reckon 
up, upon the authority of the owners of the animals, as many as 
fifty fatal cases of it within the circuit of three miles , and a period 
of twelve years. By the farriers in the quarter it is called ‘ the 
