58 ON AN APHTHOUS AFFECTION AMONG CATTLE. 
into error by the abundance of the salivary fluid, which is but a 
secondary symptom of the affection. 
Most veterinary authors give no opinion on this point. Messrs. 
Huzard, jun., Yatel, &c, pass it entirely over in their works. 
According to Hurtrel d’Arboval, these affections are the conse- 
quence of a gastro-ententis. This opinion, which is partaken by 
many veterinarians, does not appear to us so well founded that we 
ought, without examining it again, to rank it among the list of 
pathological facts. Indeed, if we are to be guided by a study of 
symptoms, by the progress of the disease and of the morbid lesions, 
we shall be led to form an entirely opposite conclusion. In the 
first place, are the symptoms and morbid characteristics of inflam- 
mation of the intestinal mucous membranes sufficiently evident ? 
M. Manet observed them but once among a great number of 
diseased animals; and, for our own part, in the whole course of 
our observations of the epizootic we never saw them at all. Some 
veterinary surgeons, less profound than Hurtrel d’Arboval in this 
physiological doctrine, have founded this opinion on their having 
observed a diarrhoea at the decline of the disease, in fat, lymphatic 
animals that had suffered much. But, again, here this diarrhoea is 
the consequence of a weakness of the digestive mucous membranes : 
it is no more the consequence of any irritation than that which is 
seen when the animals are kept on green meat ; and who is there 
that does not know that such and such kinds of fodder will produce 
diarrhoea in ruminants affected in the slightest manner by disease ? 
On post-mortem examination of the animals slaughtered during the 
disease, there was not, in by far the greatest majority of them, the 
slightest morbid trace characteristic of gastro-ententis. Lafosse 
has even found aphthae in the trachea, the esophagus, and the ante- 
rior portion of the digestive canal. But is not their development 
in these organs better explained by the analogy of structure than 
by the hypothesis of the primitive existence of gastro-intestinal 
irritation? The conclusion to be drawn from the preceding ob- 
servations evidently is, that aphthous affections do not follow on 
gastro-enteritis. 
What is, then, the nature of these affections ? If, in the present 
state of science, we were permitted to give judgment on this me- 
dico-philosophical point, we should say that aphthous diseases are 
the result of certain organic phenomena, of whose nature we are 
in ignorance, but to which the name of fever has been given. We 
are likewise of opinion that they will one day figure in the same 
nosological list with eruptive fevers, by the side of such as rot , 
vaccinia, &c. 
Recueil de Medecine Vcterinaire, April 1845. 
