EPIDEMICS AMONG THE LOWER ANIMALS 43 
numerous circumstances, to be swept off with extraordinary viru¬ 
lence by diseases, the obscurity of the symptoms and pathology 
of which scarcely permits any argument to be founded on their 
observation. Again, we see no reason why infection or contagion 
may not be propagated from man to animals, and vice versa. The 
important and beautiful experiments of Dr. Sonderland, of Ber- 
men # , shew distinctly that the infection of small-pox will, in the 
gaseous form, and without inoculation , induce the vaccine dis¬ 
ease in the cow, and that again the malady thus induced in the 
animal becomes infectious without inoculation to man. From this 
beautiful discovery the author deduces some aphoristic conclusions 
of the highest importance; and he observes, “that an instructive 
lesson may hence be drawn, how the poison of diseases in the 
gaseous form may be communicated to the lower animals, and, 
according to the difference in their constitution, engender diversi¬ 
fied products, which may be then used as protective means 
against the maladies from which they originated. Such, for ex¬ 
ample, may be subsequently proved of scarlet fever, measles, 
yellow fever, and plague/’ Taking these facts into consideration, 
and remembering the transmissibility of murrain and glanders 
from the lower animals to man, what is the difficulty in supposing, 
that if the malady in Mr. Searle’s duck were “ a most decided 
case of Asiatic cholera,” the disease was engendered by the in¬ 
fectious poison of that distemper? In the typhoid murrain that 
ravaged the pastures of Europe during the last century, and which 
was witnessed by Camper, in Holland, in 1774; by Sauvages and 
Chaumel, in France, in 1745; by Count Moscati, in Lombardy, 
in 1795 ; it was found that seclusion of the healthy animals pre¬ 
served them, except where the keepers incautiously communi¬ 
cated from one flock to another. 
As to the fishponds of Marienburgh, it is sufficient to observe, 
that a similar mortality has several times occurred at the same 
season; and that into the lake where the loss was greatest, the 
inhabitants of the adjoining town had emptied an offensive drain 
as a sanatory measure. As well, therefore, might the poisoning 
of the Dutch eels by the Thames water be regarded as a precur¬ 
sor of cholera, or as an evidence of its non-infectious nature.— 
Lancet , Nov. 19, 1831. 
On the Identity of Small-pox and Cow-rox. 
Dr. Sonderland, of Bermen, if his experiments be correct, 
has at length succeeded in establishing what physicians have 
long laboured to discover—a satisfactory and simple explanation 
* Journal der Praktischen Ileilkunde, Janv. 1831. 
