404 
ON EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 
a greater or less size, which usually appeared about the third or 
fourth day, broke, and discharged a considerable quantity of stink- 
ing purulent matter, the beast usually did well, although the ulcers 
occasionally spread to a most fearful degree, and were always 
very difficult to heal. Most of the beasts had a universal emphy- 
sema or crackling under the skin, and this, in some, proceeded 
to a very strange and curious extent. 
The continuance of the disease was very uncertain. Some died 
almost suddenly : in others, inflammation of the brain seemed 
to come rapidly on, and the cattle became so furious and danger- 
ous, that it was necessary to destroy them. Most died on the 
sixth or seventh day, and very few lived on to the eleventh. The 
approach of death was usually indicated by the mouth becoming 
cold, the breath foetid and cadaverous, the eyes sunk in their or- 
bits, the skin tense and clinging to the bones, and especially the 
horns and teats becoming intensely cold. 
The recovery was generally very rapid. On one day a beast 
appeared to be in extreme distress, with every symptom urgent, and 
in less than four-and-twenty hours rumination had returned, the 
milk flowed freely and of its natural colour, and she turned to 
the crib with some degree of appetite. 
On dissection, the paunch was always found very much dis- 
tended with food. In the second stomach there was nothing un- 
usual ; but on the third being cut into, there generally flowed 
from it a great quantity of thin greenish fluid, of a most offen- 
sive smell. The fourth stomach exhibited marks of inflammation 
sometimes running on to gangrene. The intestines had patches 
of inflammation or gangrene ; but the liver, the spleen, and the 
kidneys w r ere scarcely affected. The lungs exhibited traces of 
the intensest inflammation ; they were usually congested with 
blood, while purulent matter ran from every part of the bronchi. 
The disease was evidently epidemic. It would cease, in a great 
degree, towards the approach of summer. During one or two 
summers, in the twelve years that it raged, it seemed to have al- 
together disappeared ; but at the return of winter it broke out 
afresh, sometimes in districts the cattle of which it had previ- 
ously thinned ; at other times, in places which had hitherto 
escaped its fury, and very distant from those in which it had 
seemed gradually to die away. It prevailed most generally and* 
was most fatal towards the latter part of the winter. February, 
and sometimes March, were destructive months. There was also 
a strange caprice about it. It would select its victims here and 
there. It would carry off half the cattle in every dairy round a 
certain farm, and not touch a single beast there ; but, six months 
afterwards, it would return, and pounce upon this privileged spot, 
