Rinderpest n. A highly contagious distemper or murrain, affecting neat cattle, and less commonly sheep and goats; called also cattle plague, Russian cattle plague, and steppe murrain.
... last to the rainy season, when the troops must have gone into winter quarters. Had they done so, the cost of keeping them would have fallen on the Chartered Company, already a sufferer in pocket from the ravages of the rinderpest and the expenses of the investigation which followed the ... — Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
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