288 THE MANAGEMENT AND DISEASES OF THE DOG. 



are the most important. The former is the author of several 

 papers on diphtheria, the titles of which are given in a note. 

 These papers contain various observations relating to diph- 

 theria as it presents itself clinically, and serve to illustrate the 

 intimate association of the development of microzymes in the 

 affected parts with the morbid process ; the author also re- 

 cords numerous experiments showing that when the disease 

 is communicated by inoculation, its characteristics reappear 

 in the infected animal, even those which belong to its more 

 remote complications. 



" Dr. Letzerich's facts lose much of their value, according 

 to Sanderson, from their not being set down with that simpli- 

 city which ought to characterize all scientific writings. His 

 papers, moreover, contain a great deal of questionable mycol- 

 ogy, in which the patient reader is apt to lose himself in his 

 search after objective facts. 



"The Memoire of Dr. Oertel, published three years ago, 

 also embodies anatomical and experimental investigations 

 relating to the effect of inoculating animals with material 

 derived from the larynx in cases of diphtheritic laryngitis in 

 children. Like Letzerich, the author found that a disease 

 having well-defined, pathological characteristics, and, in par- 

 ticular, associated with nephritis, could be produced by such 

 inoculation ; and further, that it could be communicated from 

 one animal to another without losing any of its distinctive 

 features. He further sho\/od that f:he disease in question, 

 whatever were the local peculiarities given to it by the tissue' 

 in which it was ingrafted, was always a mycosis ; in other 

 words, that all the 'localizations ' of the disease were associa- 

 ted with the presence in the affected part of innumerable 

 microzymes. As regards the agents of infection, he con- 

 cluded that their presence was the only constant characteristic 

 of the contagion, for he found that the disease could be pro- 

 duced by the transference to the tissues of a healthy animal of 

 even the smallest fragment of any diseased tissue, and that 



