348 THE EARLY HISTORY OF VETERINARV MEDICINE. 
we should expect from the experience and intelligence of a 
writer of the Augustan age. That part of his work which 
treats of the diseases of the horse is very satisfactorily minute; 
and his description of the maladies of cattle is certainly the 
best that antiquity has left us. In the contagious affections of 
cattle he orders the perfect separation of every affected beast 
from the rest of the herd ; and he points out measures for pre- 
• serving the others from infection, yet without describing with 
sufficient exactness the diseases to which he refers. He appears 
to regard the specific prescriptions as superfluous, because they 
were generally known to those who were engaged in agricultural 
pursuits. This blameable custom of the ancient writers of de¬ 
scribing so superficially the objects which presented themselves 
to daily observation, under the pretext that no person could be 
ignorant of them, is the reason that we possess such obscure 
and unsatisfactory knowledge of many very important things. 
Thus, by way of example, it is very difficult now to determine 
what was the principal food on which either the larger or 
smaller cattle were kept in early times. 
Human medicine, although it was treated on in a more 
scientific way, has many similar and lamentable chasms. The 
details which Celsus gives of malignant contagious fevers among 
men are as incomplete as those which Columella has left of the 
same diseases among domestic animals. 
Among the diseases of the larger cattle. Columella has de¬ 
scribed indigestion (cruditas )—dysentery {tormma )—colic {^ven- 
tvis et intestinorwn dolor) —fever, which he combats with bleed¬ 
ing and restricted diet — cough, of wdiich he distinguishes 
several distinct varieties—abscess, which he recommends to 
open with the red-hot iron—many cutaneous diseases under 
the common name of scabies —pulmonary phthisis {exulceratio 
ophthalmia which terminates in blindness, and for 
which he recommends sal ammoniac, a drug much used by the 
old veterinarians in diseases of the eyes. Columella speaks 
also of tlie bites of venemous animals, and of leeches which are 
occasionally swallowed by cattle when they are drinking. Ana¬ 
tolius, a more modern waiter, recommends a singular vomit in 
