344 GENERAL REPORT OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMISSION. 
for ever blemished, indeed, after a manner deformed, from the 
loss of a part of their tail; while, on the contrary, cows 
which under the experiments of the committee have con- 
tracted peripneumonia and been cured, have recovered at 
length very nearly their former value — the disease leaving 
no apparent trace behind it, nor having, in any way 
altered the aptitude of the animal either as regards lactation 
or fattening. 
Still, it is but justice to observe, in order that we may 
comprehend all tending to the impartial settlement of the 
account of this grave question, that the greater proportion 
of animals who recover their aspect of health after under- 
going peripneumonia, do not regain completely their normality. 
In an immense number of cases, as post-mortem inspection 
has shown, a part of their lungs, more or less in extent accord- 
ing to the extent of the disease they have laboured under, 
remains seized with veritable mortification. The lesion, it is 
true, continues isolated in the midst of the organ, sound 
everywhere else; it works around it a woof, remarkable 
enough, of sequestration, by virtue of which all communi- 
cation is intercepted between the respiratory tubes and the 
mortified part, which in this manner also escapes putrid 
decomposition ; which furnishes us with a reason how a 
lesion of such a nature can exist, in spite of its apparent im- 
portance, for a sufficient time, greater or less, with the con- 
servation of the powers of the animal for making fat and 
milk ; though such a mode of termination of pneumonia 
cannot, after all, be regarded as recovery in the rigorous 
sense of the word. And, in fact, it is but justice to say that 
in an economic point of view most of the horses who recover 
their health after having had the disease, though they ex- 
perience but little diminution of value in the market, are, 
nevertheless, struck with lesions of that nature of an essen- 
tial organ, which, in a physiological point of view, still is of 
considerable import, and may in the end make its influence 
felt, providing the animal should live long enough. 
After this, ought we to conclude that inoculation cannot 
be recommended to be practised as a measure calculated to 
prevent the spread of peripneumonia, or as one affording 
owners of cattle any advantage over leaving the disease to 
take its own course among their herds as it habitually or 
naturally does? 
Certainly not ! for while, on the one hand, we must take 
into consideration what the awkwardness of first essays and im- 
perfections, first procedures have enlarged, according to the 
experimentsof the committee, the losses and accidents which 
