7 44 ANALYSIS OF CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
merely to show what an interesting subject Professor Saint- 
Cyr has undertaken to investigate, and we will now proceed 
to give his observations in his own words.) 
The question that I submit to the judgment of the medical 
public appears to me to possess a real importance, not only 
with regard to comparative pathology, but also in relation to 
public hygiene. In fact, if, as I believe I am in a position to 
demonstrate, animals are liable to be attacked by Tinea favosa 
( t eigne faveuse ), principally those which are usually in contact 
with mankind, and if the disease that I have thus designated 
be identical in its nature with the Tinea favosa of man, and 
also if it is produced in every case by the same cryptogamic 
parasite, then it is very evident that the diseased animals 
may be, in certain cases, the propagating agents of one of the 
most obstinate and disgusting maladies that can manifest 
itself during the period of infancy. In this respect the study 
of tinea in animals, as I have just said, possesses an unmis- 
takable interest. 
History . — There is to be found in an essay little known, 
and written by a former pupil at the Antiquaille of Lyons, a 
hospital specially endowed for the treatment of venereal and 
cutaneous maladies, the following notice, which I transcribe 
textually : 
“Animals themselves appear to be susceptible of the 
attacks of the favus by contagion. I have seen, in a ward 
allotted to children affected with the disease, two cats with 
which the little patients were accustomed to play, contract 
the favus, which was in all respects similar to that they were 
for the most part suffering from. These favi were cup-shaped, 
dry, rounded, and of a citron colour ; some were very small, 
almost rudimentary ; others, on the contrary, and more par- 
ticularly between the phalanges of the paw of one of these 
cats, were the size of a large pea ; lastly, the hairs were de- 
stroyed around the spots to the extent of some millimetres.”* 
On the other hand, we read in M. Bazin’s work on parasitic 
affections : f 
“ All the authorities who have written on the Tinea favosa 
appear only to have observed this disease in the human 
species ; and no person, so far as 1 can learn, speaks of the 
transmission of the favus of animals to man.” 
Nevertheless, in the course of last winter, a young and 
very distinguished physician of New York, Mr. Draper, 
* Essai sur le Favus : — “ These pour le Doctorat en Medecine, presentee 
et soutenue le 12 Mai, 1847/ par J. C. Jacquetant. Paris, 1847. 
f Lepons Theoriques et Cliniques sur les Affections Cutanees Parasi- 
taires/ professees par M. le Docteur Bazin, redigees et publiees par M. 
A. Poequet, Paris, 1858, p. 118. 
