140 THE PREVAILING EPIDEMIC AMONGST CATTLE, &C. 
some of the best horses in the king of France’s stud, and, in fact, 
committed sad ravages everywhere ; but at the same time there 
was no particular epidemic amongst cattle. It had no connexion 
with other diseases, and where the animals passed through it mo- 
derately, and were properly treated, their condition was not much 
affected, but they seemed to grow much faster and better after- 
wards from their course of medicine. In those instances where the 
feet suffered much, the condition was rapidly lost, and long in be- 
ing recovered again. In one instance which came under our eye, 
the animal had the disease twice over; but we considered it an ex- 
ception to a general law in nature, that peculiar contagious fevers 
cannot affect the same system twice over ; however, it requires a 
more extended series of observations than I can furnish to set this 
point right. 
There are many strong facts which fully bear out the opinion, 
that healthy animals traversing the roads already tainted by in- 
fected animals having travelled along them, have taken the dis- 
ease, on the same principle as a sheep-walk infected with the foot- 
rot shall communicate the disease to an healthy flock turned out 
upon the same beat. This points out how cautious noblemen and 
gentlemen possessing deer in their parks should be in not allowing 
infected herds of cattle, or flocks of sheep, to pass along them. I 
consider, too, that it is capable of being conveyed by parties in 
attendance on diseased stock to healthy herds. 
Symptorns .' — The first symptoms which perceptibly shewed 
themselves were generally lameness in one or more of the feet, 
accompanied with much heat around the hoof, fetlock, and coronet, 
with a fulness and swelling often of one or more of the legs ; this 
was immediately followed by a flow of saliva from the mouth, ac- 
companied with a champing motion of the jaw. On examination, 
the mouth and tongue were full of ulcers, particularly under the 
pad of the upper jaw, the ulcers extending over the top of the nose : 
if on examining the mouth you took hold of the tongue, it was no 
unusual occurrence to find the cuticle covering it raised up into a 
white blister, and the whole of it stripped off in your hands, leaving 
the tongue in appearance like one that had been boiled and the skin 
peeled off. In some instances, the affection of the mouth, and con- 
sequent flow of» saliva, would precede the affection of the feet, but 
not as a general rule. The cow became dull and off its feed, look- 
ing anxious and sunk in the eye, the secretion of milk diminished ; 
the ears and horns were sometimes hot, at others cold ; the bowels 
constipated, the fsecal discharge looking on its outer part dark and 
glistening, and as if half baked, shewing the hot and inflammatory 
state of the alimentary canal; the pulse ranged from 50 to 70. In 
two or three days after the lameness occurred, an ichorous dis- 
