VETERINARY SCHOOL OF ALFORT. 
39;] 
It is to be regretted that the number of ruminants was so 
small ; but it should be observed, that the effects of the measure 
recently adopted by M. the Minister of Agriculture, namely, that 
of admitting gratuitously animals of the bovine and ovine species 
into the hospitals, has not yet become sufficiently known. We 
should also add, that it can only be in process of time that this 
measure can be completely efficacious. 
We will now state the most interesting results at which we 
have arrived, either by clinical observation or direct experiment. 
Acute Glanders. 
The consideration of glanders has always occupied a large 
space in the columns of our compte rendu. In fact, this 
dreadful disease commits such extensive ravages, and with such 
obstinate continuance on the horses in the neighbourhood, that 
every day new cases present themselves for our study and obser- 
vation: and, although the subject seems occasionally to be almost 
exhausted — although all that is possible appears to have been 
said on matters that have so long engaged our attention, it, 
nevertheless, has not appeared to us unimportant briefly to state 
the result of our observation respecting this disease during the 
course of the present year. 
The number of glandered animals that have been presented 
this year for examination in our school has been so considerable, 
that we affirm that glanders has prevailed, and prevails still in 
an enzootic state, in the whole of the environs of Paris. It is 
principally among the horses employed in the construction of 
the fortifications that it has raged with the greatest violence. 
The form under which it has oftenest appeared is that of acute 
glanders. Without denying that contagion has contributed to 
the development of this affection to so vast an extent among 
the animals employed in these works, nevertheless we think the 
principal cause of the extension of the pest, so considerable, was 
the exhausting and excessive labour to which these animals are 
compelled to submit. This fact will astonish no one when he 
learns that, in a great number of cases, the horses are employed 
eighteen hours out of the twenty-four in drawing the materials 
over the roughest roads. What renders this mode of viewing 
the subject more likely to be true is, that the horses which the 
disease usually attacks are those who expend most muscu- 
lar strength and power ; namely, those which, as the owners 
themselves affirmed, were the best and the most willing in har- 
ness. We quote this fact at the present moment on account of 
the multiplicity of the works that have been carried on around 
us, and which have shewn, in a more striking manner than usual, 
VOL. xvi. 3 G 
