EPIZOOTY, derived from E7ri and Cwov, signifies a plague or murrain among animals. In the common ac ceptation of the term, murrain is limited to distempers among useful and domesticated animals, whereas epi zooey comprehends those pestilential ravages to which the whole living creation is liable.
The frequent recurrence of distempers among the do mesticated animals which form the principal subsistence of mankind, has attracted particular attention to their origin, progress, and the means of cure, or of averting the danger. At present, however, we shall chiefly re strict our remarks to some historical notices of the more singular and decided epizooties which have threatened the extirpation of animals in different countries.
On ascending to the most ancient periods of history, we discover a destructive epizooty in one of the plagues of Egypt, extending to all domesticated animals. This is described by Moses in unequivocal terms, " Behold the hand of the Lord is upon the cattle which are in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep ; there shall be a very grievous murrain ;" and there is one remarkable pecu liarity indicated here, which identifies it with later epi zooties, as being " a boil breaking forth with blains upon man and upon beast." It has further been exemplified, that the plague among mankind is frequently accompa nied or followed by an epizooty.
Omitting the accounts of ancient poets who treat of such distempers, we find several allusions to destructive epizooties, in the writings of authors long preceding the Christian era. Plutarch speaks of an epizooty in the time of Romulus, as a great mortality of men and beasts in Italy, when they perished almost immediately on the attack. Dionysius Halicarnassus and Livy, particularly the latter, describe epizooties, followed by pestilence, at different intervals of the fifth century anterior to Chris tianity, also in Italy. Livy likewise relates, that ,imme diately after the capture of Agrigentum by Marcellus, in the year 212 before Christ, mankind and animals were alike the victims of a pestilential disorder; and if we could trust to Silius Italicus, the symptoms of it might be described.
In the earlier centuries of the Christian era, repeated instances of epizooty are found hi the works of the an cients. Tacitus speaks of a terrible mortality among mankind and animals, arising ea without any sensible in temperance of the weather," which swept off all ages indiscriminately, in the year 65 : and the Roman territory was ravaged by a similar pestilence about the year 190.
In the fourth century, we learn that the means adopt ed to avert a general epizooty in Europe, was marking all _animals on the forehead with a red-hot iron in form of a cross; and the violence of this remedy probably produced that efficacy which is ascribed to it. Vegetius Renatus, who flourished in the same century, suggests various cures for the different pestilential disorders of cattle.
Descending still lower, many examples of epizooty arc found in contemporary authors ; and it has been re marked, that " in the interval between 810 and 1316, a pet iud of darkness, horror, and calamity, history cha racterizes not less than twenty epizooties, more or less destructive, which ravaged different parts of Europe." Of these, five or six attacked cattle, two horses, and twelve animals in general. Four were likewise destruc tive of mankind.
Hitherto, all information concerning such diseases, had consisted in brief remarks and notices on the simple existence of the malady ; but, in the sixteenth century, the subject was examined with more attention. Fracas tori, an Italian physician, witnessed an epizooty among cattle in the year 1514, which first appeared in Frioul, whence itispread by contagion to Venice, and from thence to Verona. A similar pestilence raged among sheep in France during the following year, and both are described as an eruptive fever, narrowly resembling the small-pox. Few characteristics are preserved, except that it was extremely contagious, and that the animals which exhi bited no eruption perished. However, on the re-appear ance of that or another malady in 1578, it was more plainly designated small-pox, and apprehensions were some time after entertained, that man might be liable to infection. The Venetian government, therefore, on an universal dysentery attacking the citizens of Venice and Padua, issued an edict in 1599, prohibiting the sale or distribution of the flesh of cattle, or milk, butter, or cheese, under pain of death. It had likewise been ob served, that such distempers proceeded from the east, and that some diseased cattle had been brought from Hungary and Dahnatia, where the malady became so common, that another market was sought out for the two cities.