THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XLII. 
No. 504. 
DECEMBER, 1869. 
Fourth Series. 
No. 180. 
Communications and Cases. 
ECZEMA EPIZOOTICA. 
By George Fleming, M.R.C.V.S., Royal Engiueers. 
The present wide-spread and, to the agricultural com¬ 
munity, somewhat harassing malady, commonly known as 
the “^foot and mouth disease,^^ is apparently so simple in its 
nature and, when properly controlled, so comparatively 
harmless in its effects, that it does not appear to have excited 
so much public attention as it perhaps deserves. Neither, 
so far as the pages of the Veterinarian bear witness, does it 
seem to have offered anything novel in this invasion beyond 
the ordinary features it has presented in its previous visits to 
this country. In this respect, and so far as public interest 
or professional excitement is concerned, as well as in the 
history of its commencement and progress, it offers a marked 
contrast to its first inroad in 1839. The Veterinarian for 
that and the two subsequent years literally teems with most 
interesting and valuable descriptions of the then mysterious 
malady, from veterinary surgeons in various parts of the 
three kingdoms, who were particularly careful to note the 
first appearance of the epizooty in their districts, with its 
varying symptoms and the species of animals attacked, and 
other information which is now of particular value to the 
veterinary medical historian. 
But not only in this country were the veterinarians of those 
days anxious to record their observations and experience of this 
particular malady; on the Continent, in every direction in which 
the contagion spread, veterinary surgeons were attentively 
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