IHE CATTLE PLAGUE IN SPAIN. 
263 
absence of the present cattle plague from Spain is thus a most 
interesting subject and question/^ ... I fully believe that^ 
from the power of contagion which is so strong in the real 
rinderpest^ if one ox with any trace of that disease on him 
had been imported into Spain^ and had come into contact 
with cattle of this country^ the epidemic would have spread, 
just as liappened at Padua, in Italy, in 1711. I trust Don 
Jose will credit me with the best motives, if I draw his atten¬ 
tion to one (though, I am led to believe, not the first by three 
or four) visitation of* the rinderpest in Spain, which, by 
some means or other, he has overlooked. I am the more 
anxious to do this, because it will be seen towards the termi¬ 
nation of Mr. Dunlop’s report, that certain deductions are 
drawn from the supposed immunity of that country, which 
are apt to make us overlook, to some extent, the real source of 
the malady, and lead us to erroneous conclusions. 
Those who have studied the history of cattle plague” will 
perhaps remember, that during nearly the whole of the last 
century, the pestilence was scarcely ever absent from some 
part of the Continent, and on several occasions invaded our 
own country. The losses it caused were almost beyond 
computation; and wherever remedial measures were adopted, 
the malady appeared to localise itself, and to spread from 
these places as from a centre, appearing always, and solely, as 
a virulently infectious and contagious disease. Prevention 
did not form any portion of the medical teaching of those 
days ; and as the practitioners of human medicine were chiefly 
entrusted with the curative measures, the malady was allowed 
to exist and spread, as in this country and Holland in 1865. 
In the latter kingdom, it was scarcely absent during the whole 
century ; and in 1774 prevailed there, as well as in the north 
of Prance, and particularly in Picardy. In the month of 
June, it suddenly appeared at Bayonne, a seaport town in 
Prance, near the Pyrenees, on the Spanish frontier, from 
whence it rapidly extended inland. Por a long time,” 
says Paulet,* the south-west portion of Prance had not 
suffered from any of the great epizootic scourges. Naturally 
very healthy, bounded on the south by Spain, a country little 
subject to the pestilential diseases of animals; to the east and 
west by the sea, it has rarely shared with the other parts of 
Prance and Germany in misfortunes of this kind. Being so 
remote from the ordinary sources of these maladies, which 
constantly come from the east or north, on the side of 
Prance; the good police observed, to prevent their extension 
* ‘ E.eclierches Historiques et Physiques sur les Maladies Epizootiques/ 
vol, ii, p. 117. 
