72 RINDERPEST. 



the disparate action of the inoculate and natural forms of the 

 scarlet infection. We know that a pregnant heifer may, by 

 ergotized grain, or grasses infested with fungoid growth, sud- 

 denly abort, and unless removed from her associates of the 

 byre, the poisonous exudations from the vulva will produce 

 like disaster upon the entire pregnant stable; leaving 

 in the future for all such aborting from the contagious 

 matter, less chance of carrying their next foetal burdens 

 to full development, than in the case of the one which 

 miscarried under the action of the vegetable poison. 

 So that there may be in nature a general law by which cer- 

 tain poisons, vegetable as well as mineral, may become poten- 

 tized in their victims, and taking to themselves a more 

 deadly virus, spread the most virulent infection. Strange as 

 the announcement of such a doctrine, mysterious as the con- 

 version or cooperation of such agencies may be ; they do not 

 afford so great a i)uzzle to the understanding, as that by 

 which we are called upon to account for the first developed 

 case of any contagion, whether of small pox or cholera in 

 the human race, or of any of the deadly murrains in the 

 bovine. 



We state the difficulty which is experienced in the scientific 

 world, without insisting upon any theory, conjectural or imag- 

 inary. It is enough to dispel existing delusions which trace the 

 sources of contagion solely to malarious vapors or atmos- 

 pherical degenerations, or again, to active animal or vegeta- 

 ble parasites, or to any other source than that of poisonous 

 vitalized germs. 



It is impossible to deny the vitality of pus corpuscles in 

 ophthalmia, in the public nurseries or hospitals provided for 

 children ; or of their minute off'sets (revealed with wondmus 

 power of subdivision under the microscope), as they are trans- 

 ported through the air, remain dormant on clothes, com- 

 municated by towels, until they reach the conjunctiva, pre- 

 pared, in under-tone or by morbid process, for the supply of 

 nutrient matter for these putrid germs. The statistics of 

 surgical cases in our armies during tlie late war confirm the 

 observations made elsewhere, that pus globules invade the 



