PLEURO-PNEUMONIA IN CATTLE. 
411 
how I have done it. ' I have addressed you, Sir, with con- 
fidence, because I know all the solicitude and the interest 
that you take in agriculture, the source of the material life 
of a people. I hope that, according to your custom, you 
will entertain with favour and eagerness a new means of 
riches and prosperity for agriculture. I dare think that you 
will give me the opportunity of confirming my experiments ; 
that you will do me the honour of having the value of my 
method judged by the most competent men ; the means you 
will find better than I. You might, for example, cause my 
experiments to be made under the control of experienced 
men well acquainted with the question, in the stables of the 
town where I live, and where the number of diseased animals 
is frightful. 1 desire that the happy results already obtained 
may be the prelude to new successes ; and I hope, for the 
good of our dear country, and for that of other nations 
afflicted like us by this scourge, that agriculture will find 
therein some new resources, and that pleuro-pneumonia will 
be arrested in its destructive course. 
My preservative measure. Sir, consists in inoculating 
sound and healthy animals with the disease itself, by means 
of the blood and liquids pressed from the lungs of an animal 
diseased with pleuro-pneumonia. 
While studying pleuro-pneumonia I have constantly en- 
deavoured to throw light upon a point exceedingly important 
and still very obscure, that is to say, the contagion of the 
disease, admitted by some, rejected by others. I entertaioed 
doubts upon the real contagion of the disease, and these doubts 
were to me an additional reason for undertaking new ex- 
periments and trying inoculation. The question of inoculation 
is not yet settled ; the inoculations of Dieterichs, to prove 
contagion, remained without result; to the inoculations of 
Yix, pneumonia succeeded; but what kind of pneumonia? 
probably that which follows phlebitis, or a general infection 
resulting from the introduction of putrid matters into the 
blood. The question of inoculation is resumed at present in 
France by the Administrative Commission, appointed to 
study the pleuro-pneumonia of cattle : a commission to which 
the French government, which is so liberal when the in- 
terests of agriculture are threatened, grants considerable 
sums in order to study the scourge and make experiments. 
This commission, composed of eminent men, proposes as the 
first question of its programme, experiments to be made. 
“A primary series of experiments should be made to 
ascertain whether pleuro-pneumonia can be transmitted by 
inoculation with the blood and with certain products of 
