INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
G72 
and conducted, as the Epidemiological Society is, by most 
distinguished and talented physicians and surgeons, we find 
it determined to do its best to make clear the causes of the 
extension of this class of diseases among animals as well as 
man. With this view, it has very lately appointed an Epizootic 
Committee, which is now in full operation. I hold in my hand 
a list of the queries, and an important one it is, which the 
Committee intends to circulate far and wide in this country, 
on the subject of pleuro-pneumonia. As these questions are 
to undergo some revision before being published, it would not 
be right that I should read them ; but, when brought before 
you, I doubt not you will agree in the observation of their 
value. Here we have another assurance, that medical men 
are willing to assist the onward progress of Veterinary 
Medicine; thus admitting the principle, that they and we 
are fellow-workers in the same field of science. This is the 
legitimate union that should exist between us, and one I 
desire to see drawn tighter every day, by the bonds of asso¬ 
ciation and friendship. On this subject, time will not permit 
me to dilate; and I proceed, therefore, to make another remark 
or two respecting these epizootics. 
It is certainly not a little remarkable, that, within the last 
thirteen or fourteen years, we should have witnessed the out¬ 
break of three of these maladies, each perfectly distinct from the 
other; while, from the records preserved to us, it would appear 
that no disease of a similar kind had visited this island for nearly 
a century before. Had such been the case, doubtless, it would 
have been well known, because the progress of these affections 
during that period has been regularly traced in Europe. 
The epizootic from which the cattle of Italy, Germany, 
France, Holland, and Great Britain suffered in 1711-12, 
came originally from Hungary, being imported, it is said, by 
some oxen into the neighbourhood of Padua, a town in the 
Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. The historians inform us, 
that if “ the saliva is dropped on the grass, and sound animals 
placed in the same pasture, they immediately contract the 
disorder;” from which observation it would appear that the 
malady was closely allied to, if not identical with, the one we 
designate Eczema Epizootica. 
The British islands were again visited by another of these 
affections, in 1745, and, on this occasion, it is said to have had 
its origin “ either from some calves imported from Holland, 
or from an English tanner, who bought a parcel of distempered 
hides in Zealand, which were forbidden to be sold.” The 
losses which followed were immense, tens of thousands of our 
cattle falling a sacrifice in the course of a year or two. 
