676 INTRODUCTORY LECTURE OF PROFESSOR SIMONDS 
For want of knowledge and good skill 
Oftimes it may so fall 
A man that is full rich in beasts 
He may soon lose them all; 
Therefore in this I counsel thee, — 
Seek first to help disease ; 
As great a praise to him that saves 
As he that can increase.” 
A few years after the publication of Mascal’s work we find it 
to be reviewed, corrected, and republished with additions by 
Richard Ruscan. 
The remaining portion of the 17th century produced but few 
writers, either original or otherwise, upon this subject; however, 
there is one abounding with ignorant and foolish receipts, which 
seems to have been, like Markham’s masterpiece, a source of 
much profit to the booksellers, as it passed through several edi- 
tions, extending over a period of no less than a hundred years. 
The original was published in 1683, by James Lambert, a practi- 
tioner of thirty-five years’ standing. 
We may safely leave without notice all those who wrote upon 
the diseases of cattle from this period to the year 1714, when this 
country was visited by one of the most destructive epizootics of 
which we have any record. The term applied to the infection 
was murrain; and although it is not my intention in this intro- 
ductory address to go fully into the history of the visitation, still 
I consider it right to give you a few particulars connected with 
its appearance, and the sad effects which followed its introduction. 
The term murrain is one of very ancient date, being frequently 
met with in the Pentateuch of Moses, and other parts of Holy 
Writ. Thus we read in Exodus, chap. 9, that, amongst the 
plagues which the Lord God visited upon Egypt as a punishment 
of Pharoah in disobedience of his commands in detaining the 
children of Israel, was murrain : “ Behold, the hand of the Lord 
is upon thy cattle which is in the field ; upon the horses, upon 
the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep , 
there shall be a grievous murrain.” This event may be placed 
nearly as far back as 1600 years before Christ. 
W'e find, in perusing the records left us of these epizootics, that 
from time to time both Greece and Rome were visited by similar 
malignant diseases, nor were their destructive effects confined to 
Gattle. Plutarch informs us that in the days of Romulus a great 
plague, after destroying the fruits of the earth and the cattle, 
swept off many of the Romans ; and Livy relates that, in the 
year 355 of the Roman era, there was such a plague over all sorts 
of animals that, neither the cause nor the cure being discovered, 
processions, offerings, and supplications were made in Rome, dur- 
