The rinderpest of the present time, and the contagious cattle distempers of former ages, in these islands and on the continent : considered especially with reference to the connection between those distempers and cholera, plague, and other epidemic diseases / by Thomas More Madden.
- Thomas More Madden
- Date:
- 1866
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The rinderpest of the present time, and the contagious cattle distempers of former ages, in these islands and on the continent : considered especially with reference to the connection between those distempers and cholera, plague, and other epidemic diseases / by Thomas More Madden. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![all but uninhabited solitudes. And at this time we find that the relationship of epidemic to epizootic disease was well illustrated, every outbreak of the “ Black Death” being preceded or immediately succeeded by the appear- ance of a murrain or plague of a similar type among cattle. This was the case in England, in the year 1348-49, when, as Dr. Hecker has observed—“ The plague, which then seemed to be the sole disease, was soon accompanied by a fatal murrain among cattle. Wandering about with- out herdsmen, they fell by thousands; and, as has like- wise been observed in Africa, the birds and beasts of prey are said not to have touched them.” (“ Hecker’s Epide- mics of the Middle Ages,” p. 28.) A century later the “ sweating sickness” was also accompanied by murrain in England. In his “Account of the Plague in London” in 1665, Dr. Hodges states that “ On the year before the late pestilen- tial sickness, there was a very great mortality among the cattle from a very wet autumn, whereby their carcases were sold among the ordinary people at a very mean price ; and a great deal of putrid humours in all likelihood pro- duced from thence. And this, in the opinion of many, was the source of our last calamities ; and many know- ing persons ascribe the pestilence to this origin, as the mor- bid disposition to which such a feeding must needs subject the people could not but facilitate both the infection and progress of that fatal destroyer.” (P. 59.) In another part of the same work. Dr. Hodges says : “ Moreover, in this regard we may consider the frequent mortalities amongst cattle which forego an infection amongst mankind ; for these creatures, living for the most part in the open air, not only are more influenced by it when tainted, but are also hurt by the infectious venom which gathers upon the herbage; as, likewise, they are more liable on other accounts to feel its firsl approaches, because its freest progress is in open places.” (Loimo- lof]ia, p. 142.) In one of the pamphlets on the cattle plagues of the last](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22361637_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
