ON EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 
407 
the disease, and the restrictions with regard to the sale or re- 
moval of cattle, and communication between different districts, 
were so frequently evaded, that it was either impossible or im- 
politic to levy the penalties. 
There was so much caprice about the disease, and beasts so 
often recovered after all hope had seemed to have passed away, 
that the farmers began to resist the slaughtering of their cattle, or 
concealed them when they were sick; and, on the other hand, in 
ridicule of the competence of these judges, they brought all their 
old and worn-out animals, or those that were ill of totally dif- 
ferent complaints, and had them destroyed, and claimed the 
remuneration which the government allowed for those alone that 
were infected with murrain. 
Of the propriety, however, of this bonus for the destruction of 
infected cattle there cannot be a doubt; for there were numerous 
instances in which those who began to kill the sick as soon as 
the distemper appeared among their cattle lost very few ; but 
others, who would kill none until their folly made them wiser, 
did not save more than one out of ten. 
As to the more strictly medical part of the affair, there were 
such contradictory opinions among these scientific men — some 
maintaining that it was an inflammatory fever, and others that 
it was a bilious fever, and each defending his theory with so 
much warmth and obstinacy, that the simple farmer was first 
puzzled and then disgusted. There were also such different 
modes of treatment recommended, — drugs both for prevention 
and cure, which either had never been used for the diseases of 
cattle, or had been proved, even by the beast-leeches of the 
day, to be perfectly inert in the ruminant, all evidently founded 
on conjecture and hypothesis, and borrowing nothing from ex- 
perience, that, in the language of Dr. Davies, “ the graziers 
found more recover when left to themselves than when tampered 
with, and Nature was a better director than an officious pre- 
tender.” 
Dr. Layard gives a very curious account of the matter: — “ Dis- 
appointed in their hopes from regular practitioners of physic, 
they (the farmers) despised all regular methods, and ran head- 
long after such remedies as were at once to remove every com- 
plaint, and were honoured by the authors with the ever-recom- 
mending title of Infallibles. Nor were these remedies efficacious, 
for tar-water, Bateman's drops, Godfrey’s cordial, worm powders, 
and many other things were all given, and all to no purpose ; un- 
til, bewildered in a labyrinth of opinions, and distracted through 
their absurd credulity, they became as superstitious in this case, 
with regard to their beasts, as fatalists are with regard to them- 
