218 ON CHOLERA IN DOMP:STICATED ANIMALS. . 
the point of death, having been ill only about seven or eight 
hours. From what I then saw, I could form no particular opi¬ 
nion respecting the disease, and had some intention of making 
further inquiry regarding it; but, finding that I was likely to 
alarm those I had occasion to have intercourse with by the 
dread of infection, which then so generally prevailed, I delayed 
doing so, until an opportunity by chance occurred of seeing the 
post-mortem appearances in a patient that died in Edinburgh. 
Having heard a lecture by Dr. Macintosh upon cholera, 
and having both seen a case in life, and also the pathological 
state after death, I was forcibly impressed with the close 
analogy which existed between the symptoms that occur in 
cholera and those which are exhibited in the herbivorous 
animals, wdiile labouring under diseases of the bowels. 1 
do not mean simply the present epidemical affection, but in¬ 
flammation or irritation of the mucous membrane of the in¬ 
testines, more especially the small intestines, at all times ; and 
I must here remark, that the herbivorous animals are generally 
cut off much more rapidly by diseases of the intestines than 
man, or the lower omnivorous animals. The braxy or sickness 
in sheep frequently destroys many in a flock in a night’s time. 
They may all seem quite well at night, but how' often does the 
shepherd find several of them dead in the morning. Cattle, 
more especially cows, the diseases of which I have more personal 
opportunities of seeing than other descriptions of that kind of 
stock, are frequently cut off in a few^ hours, as is shewn by the 
examples 1 have already given ; and it is no uncommon thing for a 
horse to be destroyed in from tw’o to five or six hours by diseases 
of the bowels. Dogs, however, I have not seen so affected, nor 
have I found them cut off so quickly as the other animals, although 
they are liable to a longer catalogue of diseases and derangement of 
the bowels, and which assume a greater variety of symptoms: 
still, however, the diseases are not so acute, and the symptoms 
are not those of that intense agony we find in the diseases of the 
bowels of herbivorous animals. Indeed, I have observed nothing 
peculiar regarding their maladies which deserves notice during 
the period the other animals have been affected ; neither have I 
observed that swine exhibit the same symptoms in diseases of 
the bowels as the herbivorous animals. 
This is a fact, simple as it at first sight may appear, that is 
of some importance; because, when we take a review of the geo¬ 
graphical progress of cholera and the habits and food of its 
victims, w’e have one explanation at least of the reason why the 
disease has been so generally confined to that class among which 
it ha« rnaxie «uch melancholy havoc. 
