558 
COMPTE RENDU OF THE 
arid space, food by its divers qualities, usage by the abuses in- 
separable from it, all, no doubt, contribute to the development of 
the peripneumony of oxen ; but through what mysterious com- 
bination do such causes, common to so many other diseases, give 
to this one the contagious character 1 Of this we are as yet in 
ignorance, and, probably, this is one of those secrets which it is not 
intended man should ever unsolve. 
Nevertheless, it is no small matter to have discovered the con- 
tagious character of an affection so rapid in its spread within a 
few years ; and since, in a case such as this, in order that we may 
have the conviction of the whole world with us it is impossible to 
overfurnish proofs, it is our intention to give some in detail in the 
course of our special compte-rendu. We shall shew peripneumony 
originating in one spot, spreading, by means of a thread, certain 
and ready of transmission, to other spots in the neighbourhood, 
and ravaging cattle-sheds which, up to that hour, had remained 
free from every taint of such disorder. 
It becomes our duty, then, to proclaim with a loud voice, that 
THE PERIPNEUMONY (the pleuro-pneumonia) OF OXEN IS CON- 
TAGIOUS; contagious through the expired air, through the nasal 
mucus, through the salivary discharges through, perhaps, the 
putridities of the dead carcass ; and it is principally through con- 
tagion that the disease has for some years been spreading into so 
many countries. 
Incurable, or almost so, in all its stages, it is not by medicine 
that we are to expect to stop its ravages. Hygiene alone, well 
understood and put into practice, can forestall its production, and 
measures taken by the police sanitaire set limits to its progress. 
Doubtless, to repeat what we have said just now, our hands 
hold not the thread which can conduct us from the disease itself to 
the source whence it has taken its rise ; nevertheless it is pre- 
sumable, that, when we shall have elevated, enlarged, ventilated, 
in a word hygienised the filthy cow-houses in which, everywhere 
in France, oxen are lodged, sans air and sans light, surrounded 
by a heated atmosphere, loaded with the mingled impurities of 
miasmatic emanations from their bodies, we shall no longer 
believe living matter, so ready to change and so dangerous 
often in changing, to be the source of those germs which render 
it capable of transmitting to other orgasms such deadly transform- 
ations. 
Similar results, no doubt, would be obtained from a better selec- 
tion and more regular dispensation of aliment and drink, as also 
from a less demand on the services required of animals ; services 
which, whatever be their nature, are of an exhausting character, 
and which, by excess, profound^ alter organic structure. 
