SANGUINEOUS APOPLEXY. 
215 
M. de Gaspariri, who describes this affection under the name 
of gangrenous gastro-enteritis, thus expresses himself in his 
“ Traite des Maladies contagieuses des Betes a Lain ’ (p. 79). 
“This terrible disease is not contagious : I have ever seen dead 
animals opened, given to dogs, and even eaten, without having 
ever heard of the slightest accident having happened in a disease 
so frequent, and which is almost the only one that is dreaded for 
the flocks of our country, where it produces very considerable 
ravages in the districts which are subject to it.” Further on the 
same author adds : “We have already stated that gastro-enteritis, 
unattended with eruption, is not contagious. Thousands of facts 
do not permit me to retain the shadow of a doubt as to this point, 
which is besides admitted by our shepherds, who are but too apt 
to attribute all the diseases to which their flocks are subject to 
contagion.” 
Is the neighbourhood, or contact with sheep attacked with this 
disease, injurious to the man who has the care of them ! Is there 
danger in eating the flesh of those that are killed, in touching 
the carcasses of those which have died, in skinning them, in selling 
the skins'? Is a man liable from any or all of these things to con- 
tract carbuncles or malignant pustules'? To these questions we 
again reply by facts, the best, the only valuable arguments in all 
points of science requiring observation. 
The flesh of animals that have been destroyed even at the last 
stage of the disease, is, with the exception of the diseased parts, 
fine, firm, and compact, keeps well (a remark made by Hurtrel 
d’Arboval himself in his description of the so called typhus 
fever), and has been eaten in most farms without producing any ill 
effects. We have repeatedly pricked ourselves while bleeding 
diseased animals, and have opened and examined them after death 
with wounds on our hands, without any harm whatever resulting. 
Of the numerous carcasses that we have opened, some were only 
just dead, others had been dead some time, and others had been 
disinterred after having been buried ten or fifteen days. In 
drawing out the lungs, the blood has frequently spurted out over 
our face, lips, and eyes. We have seen persons place the reeking 
knife with which they were skinning sheep that had died of the 
blood between their teeth, and hold it there. Two men belong- 
ing to M. Tartarin, notwithstanding our prohibition, skinned more 
than thirty sheep with impunity that had been buried some time, 
and were already beginning to putrefy. Would a virulent and 
contagious disease have acted with such benignity under all the 
several circumstances at which we have glanced I Would not 
the greater part of the shepherds who bled the diseased sheep, 
who skinned several carcasses every day, who were in constant 
