View report page

20
also, of the fact that at certain seasons of the year,
and in certain conditions of the atmosphere, a
peculiarly tropical fever may show itself among
us; and it indicates the necessity of looking well
into the sanitary condition of vessels trading with
the tropics; for an outbreak of such a disease in
this metropolis during the hot months of summer
and autumn might be most serious.
But the most remarkable event of the year 1865
has been the prevalence of a frightfully fatal disease
among cattle. The malady was first seen in the
filthy cowsheds of London, where, if it was not
actually generated, it was so intensified that its
force became irresistible, for it spread in all directions.
Hardly six months have elapsed since
it appeared in the metropolis, and yet it has reached
the remotest districts of Great Britain, and has
travelled into Holland, Belgium, and France. In
this country alone not less than 75,000 animals
have been attacked by it, and of these about 55,000
have died, or have been killed. So sudden and
severe were the earliest manifestations of it that
they were attributed to poison; but it was soon
discovered, from the rapid multiplication of cases
and the spread of them by contagion, that the
disease was the fatal murrain from the steppes of
Russia. All its names are indicative of its terrible
character— it is the rinderpest of the Germans, the
typhus contagieux of the French, and the cattle