686 SOME ACCOUNT OF A SWINE PESTILENCE. 
one, would propagate the disorder. From the effect of the 
diseased hog-flesh on the dogs, related in the experiments, 
we infer that the suggested inquiry would yield an affirmative 
result. The settlement of this point would throw con- 
siderable light on the mode by which the disease was com- 
municated, and would explain some of the apparent anoma- 
lies as to propagation. 
We must dismiss from the theory of cause all notion of a 
meteorological origin for the disorder. The disease is too 
uniform in all its leading characters to admit of any other 
supposition than that, in each and every case, it was the 
result of a specific poison. Meteorological changes might 
influence, it is true, the diffusion of the poison. Meteo- 
rological changes might influence in some degree the course 
of the disease in an animal once affected'; for in these 
ways such changes do modify the epidemic influences ; but 
further than this admission, the modern epidemiologist dare 
scarcely go. 
The fact that the disease was not transmissible to the human 
subject, under the conditions noted by Dr. Sutton, scarcely, 
as we opine, proves that such transmission was impossible 
under all circumstances and conditions. 
If the disease was, as it would seem to have been, one of 
our common epidemics in an inferior animal, its retrans- 
mission to adult men would, in the majority of cases, be pre- 
vented by the circumstance that the people exposed had 
already been themselves sufferers from the disorder, and 
therefore were not susceptible, the disease being non-recur- 
rent. From this cause, whole countries of adults escape the 
ravages of epidemics which are decimating the child popu- 
lation. Nor is it at all surprising, that the flesh of these 
diseased swine, cooked and eaten, should not. communicate 
the disorder, for it would seem that between cooking and 
digesting, all mortal organic poisons lose their rancour, and 
arrive in the blood in new and harmless combinations. 
But we must stop. The description of the epizootic fairly 
supplied, speculation upon it were better held in abeyance. 
The disease is as yet confined to America, and will, it is to 
be hoped, find in the Atlantic and Pacific its boundaries. 
But in a physiological point of view', it is as interesting as the 
cholera of man, the black death, the sweating sickness, or 
any other epidemic visitation. We place its history, there- 
fore, before our epidemiologists, as a record of great im- 
portance ; and in doing so, we beg to offer to Dr. Sutton our 
respectful and earnest appreciation of his laborious and care- 
fully conducted researches . — Sanitary Review . 
