566 THE PRACTICE OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. 



I think very few experiments in this direction have been 

 made ; but I presume that the virus has been introduced 

 into the areolar tissue under the skin. This may not be 

 the pro2:)er way to inoculate to produce the disease. It is 

 possible that some one or more of the fluids, etc., with 

 which the virus would thus come into contact, may exert a 

 chemical effect upon it, and thus destroy its powers of pro- 

 pagation ; or it may be that it is necessary for the virus to 

 come into contact with some of the secretions of the Schnei- 

 derian membrane, combining with those secretions chemi- 

 cally or otherwise, before it is enabled to propagate the 

 disease. This problem is, I think, one well worthy of 

 earnest consideration, the more so as it is one that can be 

 easily solved by putting the matter to a practical test on the 

 next appearance of influenza in the epizootic form. Again, 

 even though communicable by means of inoculation into the 

 connective tissue, it might miss fifty times, and yet this 

 would not be proof sufficient to show that it could not be 

 thus communicated. In illustration of this, I will mention 

 the fact that in the Veterinary School at Alfort they re- 

 peatedly caused a dog to be bitten by rabid animals (over 

 seventy times, I think), yet the animal bitten escaped the 

 malady. It is also recorded in the case of an ass that 

 was inoculated with the virus of glanders, at various periods 

 extending over a year, and confined with glandered horses 

 during the whole time, that he failed to contract the disease. 

 Yet who among us has the hardihood to assert that glanders 

 and rabies are non-contagious diseases 1 It is a well-known 

 fact that the virus taken from the fangs of some of the 

 most deadly serpents can be taken into the stomach with 

 impunity, where it is neutralised, while the smallest quantity 

 introduced into the blood will give rise to the most Violent 

 symptoms. Now, if there exists in the gastric secretions 

 some principle by which this poison is neutralised, why 



