50 
ON THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF STRANGLES. 
These remarkable passages evince Solleysel’s just notions of the 
nature of strangles. Many authors who wrote after him adopted 
his opinions, viz. Garsault, Bourgelat, Brugnone, Gilbert; likewise 
Sacco. Gohier and Poggia sought to give experimental proofs of 
the contagiousness of strangles. 
Notwithstanding, however, the opinion of contagiousness was 
thus strongly supported by men of science, it could not stand 
against the doctrines of Broussais, who at this period caused a 
total revolution in the opinions entertained about the contagious 
properties of a host of diseases. Strangles became completely de- 
spoiled of such notions as ancient hippo-pathology had invested it 
with; henceforth the disease w r as located in the respiratory passages, 
and was no longer considered but as a simple inflammatory malady, 
insusceptible of transmission. 
This novel view of strangles was not long before it attracted 
numerous admirers, and for its principal defenders had Hurtrel 
d’Arboval and Professor Delafond. 
At the present day there seems an inclination to restore the idea 
of contagion. 
M. Mousis, a veterinarian well situated to be able to resolve 
this question, informs us that experience has taught him the expe- 
diency of separating horses in health from those having the stran- 
gles : a precaution rendered the more necessary from the fact of 
strangled subjects casting their discharges upon and licking their 
neighbours. And I know positively that strangles is communicable 
in this manner, not only from colt to colt, but from colts to old 
horses. 
M. Oger, veterinarian to the auxiliary remount establishment at 
Castres (in his memoir “ On the Strangles,” which was made a 
prize of by the Royal and Central Society in 1844), in loud terms 
denies any contagion; being of opinion that the simultaneousness of 
attacks of strangles on certain numbers of horses living together is 
always explicable through general causes. 
In 1848, M. Dounarieux presented a memoir to the National and 
Central Society of Veterinary Medicine, in which he says — I am 
desirous of speaking on the contagion of strangles. I have spent 
six years in the same regiment. I have been two years in garrison 
in Brie, and three years in Beauce. Neither at the dealers’ nor with 
the regiment have 1 ever seen SINGLE cases of strangles among the 
young horses. I have frequently visited detachments coming from 
remount establishments; and, when strangles has been present, 
great numbers have invariably had the disease. Since the four 
years I have resided in Puisaye, I have never been called to an 
isolated case in any stable in which young horses lodged : always 
has the disease attacked them generally. 
