REVIEW. 
329 
is not simply an inflammatory catarrhal affection of the primary 
air-passages; it is, in our opinion, a disease deeper seated, more 
radical, more general, of which inflammation of the air-passages 
is the most ordinary expression and the most common one, but 
of which the modes of manifestation may make their appearance 
in other places than in the mucous membrane, and under a dif- 
ferent form from the discharge of catarrh. 
In accordance with this view ( maniere de voir J, we are not 
unwilling to admit the opinion put forth by M. Charlier, that 
distemper is a contagious disease. 
In this respect, as has already been observed, opinions are 
completely at variance. Like as they are in all medical 
disputes where contagion is the question, some say “ yes,” 
some “no;” and what renders the complexity the more difficult 
is, that the question does not appear of a nature readily re- 
solvable through such means as are the most certain for de- 
tecting the contagious properties of diseases. Inoculation with 
the discharges of distemper gives a negative result. 
Nevertheless, it would be exceeding the bounds of fair 
reasoning, we think, were we to infer from this negative fact 
that distemper was not contagious. 
Contagion does not operate alone through the medium of 
material or ponderable substances. From the body of a sick 
animal emanate certain effluvia, principles uncognizable by the 
senses, and yet proving the elements of contagion, whose effects 
we have no other means of learning than through clinical obser- 
servation: witness the pleuro-pneumonia of cattle, so evidently 
contagious, although its principle of transmission altogether 
eludes our investigations. 
We repeat, therefore, that we have no right to reject the 
opinion of the possible transmissibility of the distemper of 
horses, merely because the attempts by inoculation have hitherto 
failed. 
The principle of contagion of the disease may reside else- 
where than in the products of the catarrhal dtscharge, and may 
exist even anterior to this event, since it is but the expression 
of the disease already advanced — arrived at that stage which 
the ancients denoted by the period of coction. 
We come, therefore, to the conclusions in favour of contagion, 
that 
1. M. Charlier’s experiments are for it. 
2. Sollysel, Garsault, Bourgelat, Paulet, Brugnone, Gilbert, 
Gohier, Toggia, &c. are unanimous for it. 
3. Such of the common horse public as are capable of forming 
an opinion are the same. Whenever, any horse shews symp- 
