The cattle plague and diseased meat, in their relations with the public health, and with the interests of agriculture : a letter to the Rt. Hon. Sir George Grey, Bart., G.C.B. / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee.

  • Gamgee, Sampson, 1828-1886.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cattle plague and diseased meat, in their relations with the public health, and with the interests of agriculture : a letter to the Rt. Hon. Sir George Grey, Bart., G.C.B. / by Joseph Sampson Gamgee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    which existing laws very inadequately provide ; it is with reference to such of those calamities that the principles on which legislation should be based may be conveniently considered; and, firstly, as to the threatening plague invasion, with the cer- tainty that if it once penetrate our herds, all human means will fail to arrest its work of relentless de- vastation. Unquestionable is it that for the last few years contagious typhus, popularly designated the murrain, has prevailed amongst cattle in va- rious parts of Europe ; and that the Austrian and French governments, guided, the first one by the learning of Eckel, the second by the result of a com- mission expressly sent into Hungary by the Em- peror of the French, -and composed of such eminent men as Renault, Yvart, and Imlin, have ordained the most stringent sanitary regulations, which hitherto appear to have succeeded in checking the pestilential progress ; but the experience of the last century in the same malady, and the great dif- ficulty generally attendant upon preventing com- munications between the various parts of a conti- nent, is good ground for apprehension, lest the barriers with which the stringent laws have hitherto confined the plague, may from day to day be broken down, and the whole European continent again involved in one of the most terrible of calamities. Our insular position ofiers much greater facility than docs the geographical relation of France and Germany, for arresting the typhus indige- nous to, and spreading from, the Steppes; and