SOME ACCOUNT OF A SWINE PESTILENCE. 
685 
From the direct cause of the disease, Dr. Sutton also 
passes to the consideration of any possible predisposing 
cause. He relates various meteorological facts, which might 
i)e assumed as influencing the disorder; but he shows that 
these are contradictory, and that evidence is wanting to con- 
nect the epizootic with any peculiar atmospheric condition. 
Altogether, he is clearly opposed to the hypothesis of so-called 
cs epidemic influence.” 
Such are the facts regarding this new and singular disorder. 
It reads as a new chapter in disease. The symptoms, as well 
as the pathology of the disorder, equally point out that the 
affection belongs to the true inflammatory type. The pre- 
monitory depression, the succeeding excitement, the high 
coloured urine, the buffed blood, the local manifestations, all 
point to the active inflammatory state, or, in other words, to 
hyperinosis, as the signal feature of the malady. The disease 
resembles an acute exanthemata of the human subject, and 
the more so in that it does not recur. But which of the exan- 
thema? It may have been a form of erysipelas; but if we 
might offer a suggestion, we should say, that the disease 
resembles a modified form of scarlet fever more than any 
other disorder. It would be an interesting experiment, and 
one we w r ould respectfully suggest to Dr. Sutton, to 
inoculate a hog with the blood from a scarlet fever patient, 
and ascertain whether there could thus be set up a series 
of symptoms similar to those which Dr. Sutton has so well 
described. 
The idea of the spontaneous origin of the disorder, is one 
to which we should feel it difficult to subscribe. We should 
feel a difficulty in such assent in an abstract sense ; but the 
difficulty is still greater when the facts which Dr. Sutton 
lias so laboriously collected are carefully analysed. For 
while, on the one hand, he offers no proof of spontaneous 
origin, he gives on the other the best proofs of the necessity 
of the presence of an infecting animal before the possibility 
of infection. It is clear, therefore, that the disease has one 
specific cause : it is feasible that the disease was originally 
a transplantation to the herd of swine from a human source ; 
or, it is just in the range of possibility, that some organic 
poison, the product of fermentation at the distilleries, pri- 
marily, but capable of reproduction in the organism, was the 
source of the malady. 
We notice in Dr. Sutton’s history the omission of one 
experiment, which should certainly be done. We mean an 
experiment for ascertaining whether the administration of the 
liquid excreted matters of a diseased animal to a healthy 
xxxi. 9 1 
