ON EPIZOOTIC DISEASES. 
249 
power ? Their task is a laborious one — it is expensive — it cripples 
the commerce of the country — it interferes with agriculture — it 
is injurious to a multitude of individual interests — it is difficult 
to establish, and that difficulty increases in proportion to the false 
notions that prevail of the nature and treatment of the epide- 
mic. The very interference of the veterinary surgeon is often an 
evil. One animal in the process of treatment may infect a whole 
stable. While the attention of the veterinarian is engrossed by 
a certain number of patients, a whole community may be empoi- 
soned, and the medical man himself may be the very vehicle of 
the infection. The pest may be diffused more rapidly than the 
antidote. Many may be cured, but a great jlmany more will suc- 
cumb before the remedy can arrive. “ All other things being 
equal,” says M. de Berg, “ it is in the country which is best 
supplied with veterinary aid that the progress of the disease is 
most rapid. The reason is simple. The surgeon often enters an 
infected cow-house without his being at all aware of it. The con- 
tagious malady has not yet displayed its usual and fatal symp- 
toms. He attends to the case before him, and then he goes to 
assist an animal suffering from difficult parturition, or labouring 
under some of the numerous diseases to which neat cattle are 
subject, and he, unaware of the mischief, carries with him the 
contagion, and spreads the evil far and wide. He carries the 
poison in every thing that he has about him, and especially in 
the woollen clothes that he wears.” 
The infected animals are likewise capable of communicating 
the disease before there is any thing about them by which its 
presence is indicated. How often has the passage of one infected 
beast through a certain district spread the disease far and wide ! 
The poison is conveyed by the hair with which they are covered, 
the effluvia from their evacuations, and the emanations from the 
pores of the skin. 
Here, then, is a noble labour if it can be accomplished — that 
which is most important of all in the treatment of this disease — 
that which, if fully accomplished, would immortalize the labourer, 
— the neutralization of the miasmata that corrupt the atmosphere. 
Can this be accomplished by the agency of the oxygenated 
muriatic acid ] I have seen many oxen die when surrounded by 
chlorine gas, and I have likewise had forced upon me the cer- 
tainty that the cow-house remained as fully infected as at first, 
although twenty disinfectant fumigations had been applied. 
M. Vicq d’ Azyr, who was charged by the Government with 
the task of reporting on the epidemic in 1776, instituted a variety 
of experiments with regard to inoculation with the contagious 
matter. “ I have dipped,” says he, “ pledgets that have been 
l 1 
VOL. xv. 
