VETERINARY SCHOOL AT .ALFORT. 
559 
Forgetfulness of those laws of hygiene which direct the art of 
managing and working animals will, when sifted to the bottom, be 
found the primitive source whence issues that peripneumony which, 
in our day contagious, generates itself, and destroys a great pro- 
portion of the cattle of France. 
Now, should you search into the history of epizootics, you meet 
with this universal cause, everywhere and at all times preponde- 
rating. 
Typhus, for example, the other disease of cattle, less frequent in 
our day than pneumonia, and less fruitful, happily, in disaster — 
what is the cause of it 1 Invariably, want of intelligence, often, 
indeed, ignorance of the most barbarous kind, in the kind of 
attention they demand. 
The history of the typhoid epizootic which, for these months 
past, has been ravaging Nievre and Allier, furnishes quite a novel 
demonstration of this sad truth. Spread open the report which 
M. the director of the Alfort school addressed through the minis- 
ter of those departments to M. the prefect of Nievre, and you will 
see, in the chapter on the causes of the epizootic, by the side of the 
climacteric influences, probable consequences of man’s want of fore- 
sight, the all-powerful influence of his heedlessness and ignorance. 
* * * * * 
There are many parts of France, in which, the same causes ope- 
rating, we witness the same evil results ; indeed, without going 
any further, we have only to look at what is the condition of the 
stables in which are lodged, in Paris, the cows who furnish the 
milk for the greater part of the town, and as you leave these stews 
you will ask yourself the question, how it is possible, not the health, 
but the life of an organic being can be supported in such a situ- 
ation. 
But these laws of hygiene , whose violation occasions so many 
evils, do they require but to be known to be put immediately into 
execution I Doubtless, no ! It is by an amelioration of the social 
condition and the progress of public reason alone, the necessary 
consequences of such laws, that so wretched a state of things can 
undergo reform. 
When agriculture shall be improved to such a degree as to afford 
comparative ease to those who till the soil ; when, instead of living 
in a wretched state of insulation, they shall unite their efforts for 
their reciprocal benefit ; then will their enlightened understanding 
teach them to seek improvements which, at the present day, they 
scout for want of intelligence to comprehend them and means to 
apply them. 
What remains must be done by the government. The law for 
