394 
COMPTE RENDU OF THE 
the progress of the disease, and given it an important place in 
the general history of the malady. 
With regard to the contagion of acute glanders, we must state 
a circumstance which clinical observation and experiment have 
rendered most striking. Acute glanders has not appeared to 
possess contagious properties so extensive as in 1840. When in 
that year we gave an account of the experiments that we had 
made on this disease, we affirmed, after many trials, that it w T as 
easily transmitted from horse to horse by cohabitation. In this year 
experiment has not given these results so frequently nor so cer- 
tainly ; and we have seen numerous sets of horses affected with 
acute glanders live and work during a very long period with 
sound horses, and without the latter being affected. 
This fact is connected with the general history of contagious 
diseases, which do not always possess in the same degree the 
property of transmitting the malady. 
What still more serves to support our observation is, that, for- 
tunately, w 7 e have not seen in the interior of the establishment 
any of those dreadful cases of the transmission of glanders to 
the human being, which during two years caused such alarm 
among us. In the hospitals at Paris, according to the accounts 
of the medical journals, the cases of glanders among men have 
been less frequent than in any preceding years, although the 
attention of the surgeon has been more than usually directed to 
this subject. 
There is another circumstance that has struck us this year, 
and which is connected with the subject of which we have been 
just speaking. Acute glanders has evidently exercised on the 
economy of the animals that it has attacked a less rapidly de- 
structive influence than it has been accustomed to do in pre- 
ceding years. During two years, the animals infected imme- 
diately sunk under the attack of the disease, or died between the 
ninth and twentieth day. This year we have seen a great number 
of horses on which the acute glanderous eruption was only at- 
tended by a slight febrile influence for several days, and which, 
by rapidly disappearing, permitted the return of the integrity of 
the digestive functions, and all the other apparent signs of health, 
without, however, the essential symptoms of glanders disap- 
pearing. 
This explains the circumstance, that, notwithstanding the 
attack of so dreadful a disease, animals labouring under it could 
be used at the different works in timber-yards and fortifications, 
and where the sanitary police laws were rarely or never observed. 
Another fact corroborates the account that we have just given 
of the mild character of acute glanders in the course of this year. 
