687 
REPORT ON THE CATTLE PLAGUE, STEPPE MURRAIN, 
OR RINDERPEST. 
By James Beart Simonds, Professor of Cattle Pathology 
in the Roj^al Veterinary College, London. 
( Continued from page 652.) 
“ Towards the end of 1844, the rinderpest, which had pre- 
vailed among the cattle in Galicia, passed through Moravia, 
and made its appearance in Bohemia, in the circle of Konig- 
gratz. The malady had already made some progress in the 
district, when M. Verner, chief of the Veterinary Depart- 
ment of Bohemia, was sent from Prague by the government 
to inquire into the precise nature of the affection. This 
gentleman, who had had many opportunities of seeing the 
rinderpest, had no difficulty in recognising this disease in 
the malady in question, and, with a view to arrest its further 
progress, he recommended to the superior authorities the 
adoption of those measures which experience had shown to 
be best calculated not only for this, but also to cause its quick 
extermination ; namely, to slaughter the sick animals, isolate 
those which had been exposed to the contagion, and establish 
a cordon around the infected places. These measures were 
put in force at once, and soon had the effect of arresting the 
farther progress of the malady, when some young physicians, 
who had had an opportunity of making, for their instruction, 
post-mortem examinations of the cattle, thought that they 
recognised in the affection an analogy to that of the 
typhus abdominalis of man. They therefore communicated 
their opinion to some members of the faculty of medicine at 
Prague, who, after making several autopsies, came to the 
same conclusion. A report was accordingly sent to the 
Government, setting forth that the malady was not con- 
tagious, that it could rise spontaneously amongst the horned 
cattle of the country by other influences than those of 
contagion, and that the means which the Government had 
adopted were not only useless but vexatious. As the faculty 
had great authority in all sanitary matters, the Government, 
although it did not entirely remove the restrictive measures, 
still did not enforce them with its usual rigour ; the result of 
which was that in a few weeks the malady had extended 
into several other circles of the kingdom, committing such 
dreadful ravages, that the Austrian government took alarm, 
and forthwith sent M. Eckel, Director of the Imperial 
