408 
ON EPIDEMIC DISEASES. 
selves. They would only bleed and give milk-pottage, because 
they believed these things innocent; and when by loss of blood 
or scouring the cattle died, they said that they left the whole to 
Providence. If they were cured, they said it was well ; if they 
died, they said no one knew any thing of the matter, nor could any 
thing have done them good.” 
It is the character of these epidemics gradually to w'ear them- 
selves out. They are frequent and malignant, and fatal enough 
at first ; but in process of time they become more rare and more 
tractable, and at length they disappear, or they select some other 
country, near or remote, as the scene of devastation. About the 
year 1758, this epidemic was evidently declining throughout the 
whole of the kingdom ; but it could not be said to have quite left 
the British Islands for several years afterwards. 
In 1757 it again appeared in France, assuming a somewhat 
new character. It was compounded of inflammation of the tissue 
beneath the skin, shewn by the appearance of tumours on every 
part, associated with inflammation of the lungs. It spread from 
cattle to horses. The poor ass is said, for the first time, to have 
fallen a victim to it, and these animals perished in great num- 
bers. The stags in the neighbouring forests did not escape; and 
many flocks of sheep, over which these epidemics had hitherto 
passed harmlessly, were swept away. The malady yielded to 
bleeding and purging in the earliest stage; but, being once 
established, it ran its course in spite of all medical treatment, 
and the measures adopted usually hastened the catastrophe. 
In 1758 it had spread to Finland. There it assumed another 
form, modified by the climate and many local causes. Some 
cattle were taken all at once. There was violent trembling, 
amounting almost to convulsion of every limb, and blood ran 
from the nose and bloody slime from the mouth, and the animal 
died in a few hours. In other cases the attack was not so vio- 
lent ; but after the shivering fit tumours began to form between 
the thighs, or on the front of the breast or beneath the jaws; 
and, when the jaws were affected, the patient was supposed to 
be most in danger. Diarrhoea usually followed. If it appeared 
early, it seemed to be an effort of nature to throw off the evil, 
and frequently a successful one ; but if it came on after the 
second or third day, the beast had not long to live. General bleed- 
ing was supposed to be dangerous, except in the very earliest 
stage of the first species of the disease. 
Stimulants were thought to be more useful, and particularly 
free and deep scarifications of the tumours and the surface of 
the ulcers. 
From Finland the murrain passed into Russia, and was said to 
