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.

  • Madden, Thomas More, 1838-1902.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

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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    The next mention of cattle plague contained in these early Irish annals is to be found in the “ Chronicon Sco- torum” in the years 91.6, 959, and 985, in which last year we find the first mention of the “ Maelgarbh.” 986. Pestilentia raagna unde clades hominum et armen- torum inter Saxones, Britones et Hibernos (Annales Ultonienses). The same year, we read in the Four Masters, “Preternatural (ie., magical) sickness was brought on by demons in the West of Ireland, which caused great mortality of men plainly before men’s eyes. The commencement of the great murrain of cows—i.e., the strange Maelgarbh, which had never come before.” The same event is thus noticed in another contem- poraneous chronicle:—“A.D. 981 (recti 986). This year began the murren of cowes called In Ireland the Moyle- garve.” In that year (we read in Short’s “ History of the Air”) there was a deadly murrain in England. 1044. “ Cluain-mic-Nois was plundered by the Con- mhaicni, and God and Ciaran wreaked great vengeance upon them for it—i e., an unknown plague (was sent among them), so that the Booleys were left waste with all their cattle, after the death of all the shepherd people.”— Annals of the Four Masters, O’Donovan, vol. ii., p. 846. 1047. “ A great snow this year, the like of which was never seen, from the festival of Mary until the festival of Patrick, so that it caused the destruction of cattle and wild animals, and the birds of the air, and the animals of the sea in general.”—Annals of the Four Masters. In the suceeeding year we read in contemporary chronicles that a great murrain had prevailed among the cattle in England. 1085. “ There was destruction of men and cattle in this year to such an extent that certain rich people were made husbandmen in it.”—Annals of the Four Masters. 1087. “ Great abundance of nuts and fruit, murrain of cattle and dearth in this year, and a great wind which destroyed houses and churches.”—Four Masters. 1115. “ Boisterous weather; frost and snow from the