¹ CQ 29 (1979), 282–301Google Scholar. Dr J. C. F. Poole, my co-author, died in 1985. Dr J. Potter has kindly put me in touch with the necessary reading and experts in the medical area.

² The movements of sheep in the period 431–28 B.C. are therefore irrelevant to the identification of the disease, but non-classical students of the subject must be warned about the suggestion (NEJM 315 [1986], 1172–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar) that the sheep and cattle, evacuated to Euboea in 431, might have been brought back after the end of the Spring invasion – only to be lost (as L concedes) by the rapid Spartan invasion of Spring 430. L's only ground for this strange assumption seems to be that the leaving of them in Euboea for the duration ‘seems unlikely’. Much more unlikely in fact is an unnecessary return of animals highly vulnerable to a hoplite or cavalry invasion, since animals are much slower to move than troops and there was no guarantee of only one invasion each year. It must be remembered that the Athenian infantry were not allowed out of the Walls to provide protection, that meat was not a part of normal Greek diet and that there was no grazing space for more than a few sacrificial animals inside the Walls.

³ Dr J. R. Russell and Professor J. Hinnells put me in touch with Desturji Doctor Firoze Kotwal of Bombay who kindly dealt with my enquiries. The record referred to is Parsee Prakesh, ed. Paymaster, R. B. (Bombay, 1936), Vol. 5, Pt. 5Google Scholar, p. 426.

⁴ Houston, D. C. and Cooper, J. E., Journal of Wildlife Diseases 11 (07 1985), 306–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. They list many frightful diseases which the vultures' stomachs can destroy including, significantly, streptococci (310). It is of course theoretically possible (since T saw no corpses of vultures) that they might have left Attica because they had become aware of danger and wished to avoid it. But learning aversion is a slow process (Behavioural Biology 17 [1976], 61–72, 87–98Google Scholar), and it is easy to understand how vultures that had eaten diseased flesh would not have died on the spot, since the bird's digestion of food may take 5 hours and the disease itself would take time to develop. In any case if vultures took warning of danger this would show that they were vulnerable to the disease, which is the crucial point.

⁵ Solomon, J., Maia 37 (1985), 121–3Google Scholar. His suggestion that the miasma theory is more scientific than T's careful study of the disease is hard to swallow, unless it is held that any theory is better than none. All scientists may at times have to make intuitive jumps but these have to be tested against evidence and abandoned if they fail. Even if doctors discounted the inferences made by laymen (and recorded by T) from experience in Athens, it is surprising that the miasma theory was not abandoned when at the siege of Potidaea during the Plague the besiegers were beset by it while the besieged were unaffected. They shared the same air, but were separated by a wall. It should be noted that doctors also ignored T's clear report of acquired immunity – a phenomenon which was only officially recognised by them in the 18th century.

⁶ The one possible passage in the Hippocratic Corpus which is adduced was discussed by Dr, Poole and myself (loc. cit. 298Google Scholar with nn. 55–6).

⁷ Cf. Hornblower, S., The Greek World 479–323 B.C. (London, 1983), p. 303 n. 3Google Scholar.

⁸ Cf. The Legacy of Islam, ed. , Arnold and , Guillaume (Oxford, 1931), p. 340Google Scholar.