quickly, and were accompanied by newspaper
paragraphs, giving such horrible pictures of
the new disorder, that the public meat-eating
community was completely overset. In
spite of the remonstrances of cattle salesmen,
the Government felt bound, not only to
strengthen the veterinary inspection and
quarantine arrangements, but to absolutely
prohibit the importation of cattle from
certain northern ports. In the then state of
knowledge, nothing less would have been
satisfactory or right; though subsequent
authoritative veterinary information has
shown that ordinary veterinary inspection
would have been quite sufficient, and that
total prohibition was altogether superfluous.

The publication of the diplomatic and
consulate information on continental cattle
disease, brought out a cloud of medical
prophets and professors vaticinating all
sanitary evils, unless grown-up England
was immediately placed under medical
superintendauce, as complete as Sancho Panza's
when he was promoted to the governorship
of Barataria, and sent in state famished and
dinnerless to bed.

Among no class are so many devoted, earnest,
charitable, ill-paid, unrequited philanthropists
to be found as among the medical profession.
In the ascetic ages no order of monks
vowed to poverty and works of charity, ever
worked harder for the poor, without reward
or hope of reward, than do many of our
unappreciated general practitioners. Doctors
are but men, however, and it is very natural
that when they have nothing to do, and have
the faculty of fluency, they should try to make
something. Hence, we have warnings so
frightful on the air we breathe, the water we
drink, the food we consume, that if they
were half true, we ought to have been all
poisoned years ago; every village pump
would be more dangerous than liquid arsenic,
and every mutton-pieman's shop would be the
distributary centre of unnumbered diseases.
Every ten houses ought to be under the
special care of a medical inspector, and every
man of fortune ought, like Sancho Panza, to
have a physician and an analytical chemist
in constant communication with his cook.

For instance, on the strength of the terrors
excited by the continental murrain or rinderpest,
Dr. Gamgee, medical member of many
learned societies, described in one of his
advertisements as "enthusiastically fond of
diving into every question of pathology ....
the more obscure the more deeply," addressed
two letters to the Home Secretary, in which
real evils are surrounded by a framework
of artificial terrors, and remedies are
suggested infinitely more baneful to public
health and comfort than anything that could
occur from leaving the public to take care of
itself.

The antidote, the oil upon the waters of
public feeling, excited by the alarming blasts
of the amateurs of obscure pathological
investigations, is to be found in a blue book
containing a report by Dr. Greenhow, prepared
under the orders of the Board of Health, and in
a statement made by Mr. Simmonds, professor
of veterinary art to the Royal Agricultural
Society of England, of the results of a journey
he has just made through the continent in
search of the steppe murrain or rinderpest,
which, as before observed, gave rise to the
meat panic.

Mr. Simmonds visited in turn Belgium,
Holland, the free cities of Hamburgh, Bremen,
and Lubeck, and proceeded through Mecklenburgh
and Hanover into Prussia, without
finding a single case, or hearing of a single
authentic case of rinderpest. In Prussia he
at last made out a rumour of a case; but it
was doubtful, and accompanied by the
unpleasant information, that if he did once
penetrate into an infected or even suspected
district, he would only be allowed to return
after a quarantine of twenty-one days, on
condition of leaving all his clothes and paper-
money behind him.

Not desiring to make so long a stay or pay
such a penalty for the benefit of science and
the credit of the Royal Agricultural Society,
Professor Simmonds preferred travelling on
into Austria, where the Government was
able to relax the quarantine in favour of the
curious strangers; and so, after travelling
one thousand three hundred miles from home,
after leaving the districts of railroads and
highroads, after enduring the excitement of
being whirled along mountain tracks at
full speed, in a springless cart, drawn by
half-wild ponies and driven by half-wild
men, after reposing their bruised limbs in
huts alive with entomological curiosities,
after satisfying the pangs of hunger with
black sour bread and potato brandy, fetid
and fiery, the Professor and his party reached
Karamenia, a village in Austrian Poland,
some hundred miles beyond Kraków, and
passing the circle of sentinels set around the
afflicted district, found themselves in a village
in which the rinderpest had recently raged.
The last victim had died and been buried,
sixty-eight hours. Science was not to be
balked. Professor Simmonds made use of
his authorisation, and had the body exhumed.
He dissected it, and immediately found a
contradiction of all popular opinion on the
subject.

The flesh was sound and by no means
discoloured or offensive; the marks of disease
were confined to certain internal organs. He
afterwards had an opportunity of examining
two living animals, one of which died within
three days; the other was slaughtered when
about to recover. In these animals the
symptoms and gradations from apparent
health to death were the same and agreed
perfectly with the authentic accounts he
gathered on the spot, where the disease is
familiar. The beast seems at first to have
caught a severe cold, and stands still and dull