REPORT ON THE CATTLE PLAGUE. 
95 
frauds would scarcely be attempted ; and we believe, in the 
event of occasion requiring it, that a system of inspection, 
comparatively inexpensive, might be devised which would 
effectually prevent any instances of the kind. 
It is further recorded that in one year, the third of the ex- 
istence of the disease, ^135,000 was paid out of the Treasury 
as a recompense for the cattle killed according to the pre- 
scribed orders, and that during the same year 80,000 head of 
cattle were killed, and nearly double that number died from 
the disease. To meet this alarming state of things, and the 
difficulties which sprung out of the adoption of the measures 
of the Government, various other Orders of Council were 
promulgated, and in the third order we find that no cattle, fat 
or lean, would be suffered to pass the Humber and the Trent 
northward from its date, namely, January 19th, 1747, to the 
27th of the following March; the object evidently being to 
protect the cattle in the northern counties by cutting off all 
direct communication between them and the infected districts 
for two months. 
Newby, in an appendix to his work on mangel-wurzel, 
states that the cattle-fair at Barnet had its origin in the ex- 
istence of this disease. c< The fair/ 5 he says, “ was formerly 
kept at Islington, till the distemper, which raged violently 
among the cows at that place in 1746, obliged the Welshmen 
to remove to Barnet, where it has been continued ever 
since.” 
Great as were the losses, no reasonable doubt can be 
entertained that they would have been much augmented had 
not the Government taken the ^course it did ; and we also 
fear that the continuance of the disease would have been ex- 
tended over a far greater number of years than it was. The 
attempts at cure were not satisfactory, and very little was 
known of the true nature of the malady even by those mem- 
bers of the medical profession who gave attention to it, for 
at that time there were no scientifically educated veterinary 
practitioners. After a careful perusal and analysation of the 
writings of the different physicians who have treated of the 
subject, we believe that we are justified in saying that the 
malady was identical with that which has recently excited so 
much fear and alarm in the public mind, as being likely to 
be introduced from the Continent. 
From the period of a subsidence both in the amount and 
virulence of this cattle-pest in 1754-5, until its final depar- 
ture a few years afterwards, England appears to have been 
singularly exempt from epizootic diseases, and to have re- 
mained so down to August, 1839? when great anxiety was 
