HISTORY OF CONTAGIOUS AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES. 
561 
bidding the sale of beef, butter, milk and cheese, fixing the 
penalty of death for the offense, in order to prevent the pos¬ 
sibility of the disease attacking the people. 
In ibioan epidemic broke out in Alsace, together with the 
pox, which seems to have been gloss anthrax of a species 
of stomatitus aphthosa and which was, according to Mercur- 
ialis, transmissible to man. In Venice it was called “ Gian- 
dussa.” A species of cattle disease broke out in Saxony 
(1643) called by Weeks the “ flowing plague,” which proved 
fatal to many thousand head of cattle. The only remedy was 
to mate the animal with a horse; if this was done before in¬ 
fection, all danger was averted. 
Thomas Partholinus reports that a sort of frenzy attacked 
animals in Denmark, after a very hot, dry summer in 1661, 
making them almost wild. It attacked both horses, cattle and 
sheep. On examination after death, one or more worms were 
found in the brain. 
In 1682, while the plague was raging all over Germany, a 
very destructive epidemic broke out there and in France, 
Switzerland, and Poland, called the “ flying cancer” or 
‘‘tongue cancer,” doubtless, however, anthrax of the tongue. 
This disease spread with extraordinary rapidity. Vogel says 
in the Leipzig Annals, “ This disease spread in twenty-four 
hours over an extent of territory two miles long by four broad;’ 5 
and Dr. Winkler, physician to the Elector of the Palatinate, 
reports “that the disease did not appear simultaneously in 
different places, but that it kept a fixed course, without mis¬ 
sing a village on its route ; the under side of the tongues 
of the diseased cattle became covered with white in¬ 
flamed pustules, which in a short time encircled the tongue, 
and if no remedies were employed, the tongue fell from the 
mouth in twenty-four hours, causing the animal’s death. Af 
ter death the tongue was found to be rotten and eaten away ; 
in some were found traces of malignant quinzy, in others 
traces of milt. It was observed, both in Germany and France, 
that those who attended the diseased animals were themselves 
soon attacked. The most effective mode of arresting the 
course of the disease was to scrape the tongue with a piece 
