448 Veterinary Medicine. 



mon people and physicians both associated tuberculosis with a 

 malady so notoriously contagious as syphilis, speaks strongly for 

 the forcible evidence of contagion manifested at that time. Mor- 

 gagni, who must have begun practice about 1700 A. D., testifies- 

 to the strong conviction of the contagious element in tuberculosis. 

 Indeed it became a common practice to isolate the consumptive- 

 person from the public, and after his death to burn his clothes- 

 and sometimes even the house, or at least to subject them to a 

 careful disinfection. It is recorded that in 1750, in Nancy, the 

 magistrates ordered the burning, in the public square, of the per- 

 sonal property of a woman who had died of phthisis, from sleeping: 

 in the bed of another consumptive person. 



"At Naples, a royal edict of September 20, 1782, prescribed 

 the sequestration of the phthisical, the disinfection of the rooms,, 

 chattels, movables, books, etc., with vinegar, eau-de-vie, lemon 

 juice, sea- water, fumigations, etc., under a penalty of three years- 

 at the galleys, or in the case of nobles, of three years imprison- 

 ment and a fine of 300 ducats. A physician who failed to report 

 a case of consumption was fined 300 ducats for the first offense,, 

 and banishment for ten years in case of a second. Any one as- 

 sisting in such evasion of the law was sent to prison for six. 

 months. , 



" Chateaubriand found that, in 1803, he could not sell car- 

 riages in Rome, because Mme. Beaumont, who had died of con- 

 sumption, had ridden in them three or four times. George Sand,, 

 who was with the phthisical Chopin in Minorca in 1839, was re- 

 fused a lease of the house for the second month, and the price of 

 repainting and purifying was demanded. I^ater, in Barcelona, 

 they were assessed for the bed on which Chopin had slept, as the- 

 police regulations prescribed it should be burned. 



" This was not a mere survival of vulgar prejudice. Jacobi 

 tells us of a dog which died of consumption from eating the sputa, 

 of his phthisical master. lyaennec, the discoverer of auscultation, 

 and the great authority on pulmonary consumption, records that 

 he himself contracted a tuberculous nodule, through a wound 

 with a saw, while making a necropsy in a case of phthisis, 

 lyaennec died of tuberculosis later, although he seemed to have- 

 checked this lesion by caustics. Andral joins lyaennec in enjoin- 

 ing the greatest caution and cleanliness in taking care of, or asso- 

 ciating with persons having advanced tuberculosis. 



