CONTAGION. 229 



up, by asserting that "at the present day, an immense majority of the 

 veterinarians of Germany, Britain, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, believe in the 

 contagion (even) o{ cfwonic glanders." 



It would be an easy matter for me, or for any person engaged in 

 practice, to multiply examples of presumptive contagion; but if those 

 I have adduced, in combination with the established fact of propaga- 

 tion by inoculation, fail in carrying conviction to the unbiassed 

 mind, that glanders is a contagious disease, I should feel ap- 

 prehensive that any addition of narratives of similar occurrences 

 would prove alike unsatisfactory. I am aware it is just as easy 

 for anti-contagionists to bring forward an equal or even a greater 

 number of examples of sound horses having stood beside of or 

 lived or associated with others that were glandered without having 

 caught the disease. Such, however, to my mind, estimated at 

 the 77iost, but tend to shew that the chances against contagion 

 are greater than those in favour of it ; and by no means insubstan- 

 tiate authenticated facts proving glanders to be a contagious dis- 

 ease. Were counter- facts such as these allowed to have more than 

 their due weight, it would be easy to shew that the contagion 

 of syphilis were matter of doubt : six healthy men shall have 

 intercourse with the same diseased individual woman, and it shall 

 happen that but one or two of the men shall take the venereal 

 disease, the remaining four or five shall escape. Does this throw 

 any difficulty in the way of believing syphilis to be contagious, 

 when, both by inoculation and contact, it has, over and over again, 

 been demonstrated to be communicable] Supposing for a moment — 

 and I believe such to be the case in glanders — that instances 

 wherein, under the influence of contagion, no disease has been 

 contracted are in amount greater — even much greater — than the 

 examples wherein contamination has taken place, still, if half- 

 a-dozen honest cases of proved contagion can be adduced, they 

 are of themselves sufficient, against all the host of evidence on the 

 other side, to prove the bare fact, that the disease is a contagious 

 one. And, after all, the counter-evidence amounts but to this — 

 that so far from being a highly contagious disease, the chances of 

 escaping are greater than those of catching its contagion. 



