278 Mode of Rearing Cattle in Spain. 
Gallicia and Asturias cattle find their way to France and 
to Ergland, but none come thence to us. I fully believe 
that, from the power of contagion which is so strong in the 
real rinderpest, if one ox, with any trace of that disease on 
him, had been imported into Spain, and had come into 
contact with cattle of this country, the epidemic would 
have spread, just as happened at Padua, in Italy, in 1711, 
from a diseased ox (coming from Dalmatia), being intro- 
duced into the stalls of Count Borromeo, and thus causing 
the fearful murrain which at that time almost ruined the 
pastoral wealth of the north of Italy. We are in hopes 
that the peculiar topographic character and configuration 
of our country may stand in the way of the production of 
the disease in Spain. Up to this time this, in addition to 
non-importation of cattle, has been in our favour, and if we 
compare the local condition of the places where, according 
to the opinion of most veterinary writers, the rinderpest is 
spontaneously produced (2.2, in the morasses and lagoons 
of Tartary and some parts of Central Europe), with the 
position and circumstances of our country, we shall find 
them to be: in direct opposition to each other. Many 
medical writers have traced cholera-morbus to the fetid 
and poisonous effluvia from the swamps and sunderbunds 
of the Ganges, and thus we veterinary students are con- 
strained to accuse the wide marshes of Russia, Poland, and 
Hungary, of being the birthplace of rinderpest. All the 
contagious cattle diseases known since 1709, have either 
spread from that focus of infection, or been similar to the 
maladies often prevailing there. The Governments and 
people of the rest of Europe should carefully direct their 
attention to this fact, and so much the more because 
hitherto it has seemed that the present disease is far more 
easy to prevent and keep off than to cure.. Were the 
disease to break out in Spain, isolation of suspected cattle, 
and careful separation of healthy, suspected, and diseased 
cattle would be the first means that we should adopt; but 
the cattle of the three different categories ought to be kept 
at a distance from each other, not only separated. JI am 
at present doubtful of the success of any means of cure, if 
the rinderpest takes strong hold of an animal, that is, dur- 
ing the first period of its breaking out. In fact, we should 
try to treat it here as endemic, epidemic, and highly con- 
tagious, all at once, and at first we should certainly, in any 
locality, deal with it as incurable, and try to stamp it out. 
If it continued and spread, we should be guided by circum- 
stances, and by its greater or weaker virulence. 
