REVIEW. 
333 
While, however, we are saying so much of our own opinions 
and practice, it is but fair that we should give currency to what 
we have heard to the contrary; and which, while it proclaims 
in favour of M. Charliers views of contagion, comes from 
authorities to which we have every inclination to pay attention. 
And one of the strongest evidences of the kind that has come 
to our knowledge — one, indeed, that has at times almost tempted 
us to waver in our own belief — is what was communicated by 
an extensive dealer in Yorkshire, who, perhaps, has more young 
horses passing through his hands in the course of the year than 
any man in the country. We mean Mr. Shaw, of Acomb Hall^ 
near York. Believing, as he firmly does, in the contagiousness 
of distemper, on one occasion, in the course of a conversation 
we had with him on the subject, he informed us, that, whenever 
he felt desirous that any young horses he had on his farm for 
sale should take distemper, he had only to introduce a distem- 
pered horse among them, and the disease was almost certain to 
become epidemic. In our own country this is no new notion. 
Very far from it, indeed. Prosser*, who wrote a small work on 
strangles and fever in 1786, asserts that strangles may be com- 
municated through inoculation . Could this be satisfactorily 
demonstrated, it would, of course, settle the question of conta- 
gion, and might go far to induce us to believe the disease to be 
communicable through infection or the medium of the air. We, 
however, are in possession of no modern confirmation of this, 
save the notions we have stated as current among breeders and 
dealers and persons who, however intelligent they may be in 
the management of horses, we dare not cite as decisive authority 
in the solution of pathological queries. 
* We have not the work by us ; nevertheless, we believe this to be a correct 
statement. 
VOL. XXIV. 
Z Z 
