34 
ON THE EPIZOOTIC. 
a hasty sketch of this malady from the earliest period of which 
any record of it remains. I do not know a portion of veterinary 
medicine that has been so much neglected, and yet that is so 
important. Destroying, as it has occasionally done, multi- 
tudes of useful animals in a short space of time, there are few 
classes of disease of which we know so little, and in the treat- 
ment of which some of the most skilful of us are almost power- 
less. “ Obscure and mysterious as they are in their causes,” 
says Hurtrel D’Arboval, “ insidious and rapid in their pro- 
gress, fearful and deceitful in their symptoms, deadly in their 
results, and speedily destroying numerous victims before their 
nature or even their existence is ascertained, they deserve pro- 
founder study than has yet been bestowed upon them.” 
It will not be uninteresting, but will prepare us for the consi- 
deration of modern enzootics, to take a rapid survey of the 
character of these maladies in early times and in different countries ; 
and in doing this we shall often be considerably indebted to the 
labours of Dr. Paulet. 
There can be little doubt that they are as ancient as the world ; 
the first actual description of them, however, is given by Moses, 
about 1750 years before the Christian aera. Pharaoh had refused 
to permit the departure of the Israelites from Egypt: Moses was 
therefore commanded to threaten him that, if he persisted in that 
refusal, “ the hand of the Lord should be upon the cattle that was 
in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, 
upon the oxen, and upon the sheep, and there should be a 
grievous murrain*.” To this was added, a circumstance of frequent 
occurrence in the present day, the confinement of the murrain, 
for a certain period at least, to particular districts. “ The Lord 
shall sever between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt, 
and there shall nothing die of all that belongs to the children of 
Israel ; and the Lord did that thing on the morrow, and all” — 
a great many — “ of the cattle of Egypt died.” 
This punishment having no effect on the obstinate monarch, 
another species of murrain was threatened, consisting of “ boils 
breaking forth, and blains upon man and beastf.” Blain is an- 
other word for pustule. The boil is an eruption of a larger kind, 
sometimes arising without any evident cause, especially in ple- 
thoric habits, often becoming an epizootic in the spring of 
the year, both in the human being and the quadruped, and not 
unfrequently taking on a carbuncular and even a pestilential 
character — assuming frequently the type of the ignis sacer — pain- 
ful to a dreadful degree while it lasts, and destroying many a c 
patient. We shall have more of this as we proceed. In the 
* Exod. ix, 3, 4, 6. f Exod. ix, 9. 
