Honoré Bourguignon

“ We refer to the slaughter-house of the great Metropolitan Market. Here we saw, in lumps and fragments, every variety of corrupt detritus of animals which had been seized with the contagious typhus; we saw the animals, too, being felled and slaughtered and dissected, in a high temperature which rendered the air so poisonous that we could hardly breathe it; yet amidst all this infection the workmen employed to move and handle these revolting wrecks appeared indifferent to the scene, and quite in their usual health. No living animal besides man could stand such a trial ”

“ A spirit of observation which delights in measuring the phenomena of nature with the contracted compass of its own short views and conceptions, could alone have imagined that the ox-typhus was only to be found originally in the steppes of Hungary and Russia, and that the bovine species of those countries, thanks to a special organization, was alone capable of generating the typhus. ”

“ If such be the case, can any one believe that the treatment of diathetic and hereditary maladies would be, as they still are, insoluble problems; and that the physician would have the misery of seeing decimated, whilst he helplessly looks on, a large part of the population, condemned inevitably to die of consumption and cancer? Would every man smitten with hydrophobia be irrevocably condemned to death? ”

“ Thus an animal which used to be cheerful and familiar becomes silent and solitary; it browses the grass with less eagerness and avidity; it lies down more frequently and longer; it lingers by the side of the hedge along the field, or it wanders about, here and there, with a listless look, and without any object. Others moan and complain, bellowing at intervals in an unusual manner, very expressive of languor and pain.
But apart from seasons of epizootia, the beasts too often exhibit these imperceptible shades of variety in their looks and actions for the attention to be struck by them ”

“ We have disinterred and brought to light the forgotten works of conscientious and competent men. Like Brunelleschi, the architect, we have sought, not to invent a theory, but to recover a practice; and thus we have received the observations and precious facts, and finally the preventive treatment, of other men and other times, which had coped successfully against the cattle disease when its ravages were infinitely greater. ”

“ But this preservative remedy is most frequently deceptive—a mere illusion; for the real plague, typhus and cholera, borne along by the winds of heaven, pass over the longest distances and the highest obstacles, and baffle all our calculations; teaching us, by their successive returns, that we shall continually be exposed to their destructive havoc so long as we neglect to eradicate the evil at its original source, that is, in those countries from which it emanates. ”

“ In a word, to sow virus is to reap it; but there are many ways of sowing it, and one man will reap a rich harvest, whilst another shall gather nothing but tares. Let those unbelievers say what they like, and take my word for it, that we shall one day cure typhus as frequently as we do small-pox, by inoculating it, and when it appears in spite of that course, by treating it medicinally.
This contagious disease is very frequent in certain countries, principally in Russia and Hungary, on the banks of the great rivers which empty themselves into the Black Sea. ”

“ Such, then, farmers and graziers, is the treatment to be opposed to the ox typhus: it is simple as respects the remedies, and I have deemed that it ought to be so, in order that the medicines prescribed might be had everywhere, and at a cost which the poor man could command as well as the rich. The disease is variable, it is not always equally deadly; and there comes a moment when in some sort it cures itself, with a little assistance and watching. The great point is, to be careful and vigilant, to attend to nature and the instincts of the suffering cattle, and lend yourselves to both. ”

“ In such peaceful homes these innocent creatures were tended by intelligent and benevolent hands, which understood and felt for their frail constitutions; food of the best quality was lavishly supplied to them, and whatever they could wish for lay around them in abundance; richly reared, they had themselves become so many ornaments within these scenes of beauty, and all men thought that here, at least, were plots of rural ground which the genius of epizootia would not invade, and in which the healthy herds were invulnerable to contagion. ”

“ With nature, organic matter is organic matter, life is life; and although it may be true that both organic matter and life become more complex, and continue to rise in perfection till they reach man, it is quite as true that the laws of pathology and physiology are the same in all, and that it is just as difficult to cure the typhus of the ox as that of man. As, therefore, it is because we overlooked these fundamental truths, that the outbreak of the cattle distemper found us unprepared, we must treat the subject with all the gravity which is its due. ”

“ The epizootia of bovine typhus which is now extending its unrestricted ravages over this island, and which has assumed the magnitude of a general calamity, has naturally excited and stirred up the public mind. Thoughtful and earnest men could not look on and witness unmoved the ever progressive march of the scourge; but each observer has, consistently with his means and qualifications, striven to find a remedy to resist the evil. ”

“ That which is true in the vegetable is true in the animal world, as regards the pre-established order which regulates and controls the phenomena of life. These laws which govern the development of organic phenomena being immutable and everlasting, permit the different generations which succeed each other on our globe to build upon a durable basis, which certifies to the slow and laborious, but irresistible march of human progress. ”

“ So long as we hear of infected, or probably infected, cattle being disseminated in large numbers from the great markets of the country, we must have the propagation of the malady. For the welfare of this country, it is deeply to be regretted that our Government cannot deal with this question as Continental authorities do. I regret to say some of our neighbours laugh at our expense. They see us helpless owing to the wretched state of our laws on the subject, and they are not a little amused at the theories of spontaneous development of the disease which some still advocate. ”

“ Medicine is at once an art and a science. An art it has been at all times, and in every age of civilized man; but it became a science only when human knowledge had acquired a certain expansion; when natural phenomena had been [Pg 313] tested and explained; when mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, general anatomy, general pathology, had enabled the inquiring physician to study with important results whatever belongs to his theme ”

“ Calamities always leave behind them disasters and victims, but they bequeath also a precious legacy. Nations which are called upon for fresh and progressive efforts, find in the experience they have gained a new source of strength and means of future greatness. I am convinced that this will be the case with England; though, helpless for the moment, and unable to stay the Cattle Plague which now ravages her entire extent, she will in future be found better prepared to resist the inroads of such a direful enemy. ”

“ With animals, as with man, health is but relative, not absolute; the healthiest in appearance often bearing within its frame the fatal principle of no distant death. Fatness not being by any means a sure sign of vital strength, many of these cumbersome beasts, though seemingly in good and sound condition, contain in their systems, in various stages of incubation, the tainted leaven of contagious affections, such as peripneumonia, or even the typhus itself. ”

“ Thus man has not the psora, or itch—the disease does not properly belong to him; the parasite which engenders it is not bred in him, it is always transmitted to him by animals. It is the same with the tænia, or tape-worm, with the trichina, or fine hair-worm.
Medical science, instituted on the bases of comparative pathology, would have made the study of diseases in the brute creation, not the collateral, but the principal object of its inquiries. It would have applied itself to the cure of the lower animals; and whilst learning to cure them, it would have ensured the cure of men's diseases. ”

“ No! every one hoped at first that he, at least, would be spared by the contagion, and the authorities did nothing to resist the evil but adopt the old course of quarantine—a remedy more illusory now than ever, since the nations are in constant communication, either in their own persons or by the exchange of their commodities; and consequently, the epidemic is pursuing its invading course from week to week.
That which is being done for the cholera gives us a scale by which we may estimate the efforts which will be made to arrest the generation and the contagion of the cattle typhus. ”

“ If we could have our choice between prevention and cure, should we not naturally take the former?
Indeed, the sources, the causes which generate the typhic miasma, are thoroughly well known to us, and these we can avoid. The developed miasms hang suspended in the air; we may, perhaps, one day destroy them, if not in the outer atmosphere, at least in the stalls and sheds where the animals inhale and absorb them. In fine, if we are powerless to arrest the fell disease when its periods revolve, we may hope at some future time to act with greater efficiency upon it during its period of incubation. ”

“ Plumbly's death was caused by the cattle plague, the borough coroner (R. Ransom, Esq.) directed a post-mortem examination to be made. But, by this time, so rapid was the spread of the virus through the system that the body appeared perfectly plague-stricken, and by Tuesday morning, when the surgeons arrived to examine it, and it was taken out of the coffin, the corpse scarcely retained the semblance of a human being, the head and trunk being much swollen and black in colour, the features quite undistinguishable, and all the flesh converted into a putrid jelly-like mass. ”

“ On another occasion, it seemed to me strange that we should be obliged to open the bladder of patients suffering from the stone, or to subject them to lithotrity, which has also its perils. Nature, I said to myself, forms calculi by uniting organic elements, by crystallizing them, and by cementing them with vesical mucus. But would it not be possible to cure the disease by employing contrary means—dissolving the calculi in the bladder by means of continued injections, changing the chemical agents according to the composition of the calculus, and adding thereto the action of a galvanic current? ”