182 
CATTLE PLAGUE. 
From France the accounts are still very unsatisfactory. The 
plague is prevalent in the following departments :—Aisne, 
Ardennes, Calvados, Eure, Eure et Loire, Meuse, Nord, 
Oise, Pas-de-Calais, Seine Inferieure, Seine et Marne, 
Somme, and Vosges. It has also recently broken out in the 
town of St. Pierre-les-Calais, where seventeen animals have 
been slaughtered. 
Round Amiens also the plague continues its ravages. 
Belgium had just succeeded by prompt measures in stamp¬ 
ing out the disease when another outbreak occurred in the 
beginning of February, at Petthem, near Thielt, which was 
also quickly suppressed by the adoption of the ordinary 
measures of slaughter and isolation. 
No more complete contrast in the methods of dealing 
with cattle plague can be conceived than is presented by 
these two countries. France during the early part of the 
outbreak, when repressive measures would have been most 
effectual, was engaged in trying very interesting but very 
unproductive experiments in therapeutics, while Belgium at 
the outset adopted the so-called barbarous, but uniformly 
successful, eradicator, the poleaxe, not, however, without 
many protests from scientific men, who did not approve of 
“ gaining a triumph at the expense of their art.” 
A desperate effort has been made to introduce the homoeo¬ 
pathic system of treatment, and the subject was brought 
before the legislature, but the Minister of the Interior decided 
not to modify the method of procedure which had hitherto 
been carried out with such complete success and at such a 
trifling cost to the country. It appears that from the com¬ 
mencement of the outbreak of cattle plague in Belgium, on 
November 12th, 1870, to January 26th, 1872, only 465 animals 
were sacrificed; of this number, 240 were killed while suffer¬ 
ing from the disease, and 165 which were suspected. 
In Central Europe there is nothing worthy of special 
notice in the progress of the disease. In Poland it exists in 
the south-eastern frontier of the government of Lublin. 
In Gallicia the disease exists in three districts, and also in 
one district of Moravia. 
