60 
COM PTE RENDIJ OF THE ALFORT SCHOOL 
hitherto, these experiments are confirmative of those which have 
been long conducted at the school of Alfort, and which are still 
continued there; namely, that chronic glanders is not conta- 
gious. 
As to acute glanders , even under the pustular form, and which 
the greater number of veterinary surgeons believe to be contagi- 
ous, the observations made in our hospitals concur with those 
that have been recorded in former years, in throwing consider- 
able doubt on the propriety of that conclusion. 
The experiments commenced some years ago on the contagi- 
ousness of rabies have been carried on during the session which 
has closed. M. Renault has been led to believe that this poison 
loses its contagious properties after a certain number of inocula- 
tions. New facts, which have been elucidated during the pre- 
ceding year, have confirmed this opinion. Several dogs have been 
placed in our hospitals under the suspicion that they had been 
bitten by others that were rabid. When the disease became de- 
veloped in these animals, two dogs and a horse were exposed to 
inoculation from them. Ten months hdve passed, and rabies has 
not been developed in either of them. M. Renault contents 
himself at present with the announcement of these facts; and 
awaits the result of other experiments before he pronounces a de- 
cisive opinion on a subject of so much importance. 
There is a disease which is often found in the establishment of 
post and coach masters, and also among horses of burden. It 
appears to have its seat exclusively in the blood, and to consist 
in an impoverishment of that fluid. An examination of the horses 
that die of this disease does not discover any important lesion in 
any of the thoracic or abdominal viscera, except a remarkable 
paleness of them all, with the exception of the spleen, the sub- 
stance of which, under a slight pressure, is softened into a black 
p u 1 p- 
During the life of the animal the disease is chiefly character- 
ized by an engorgement of the lower extremities, resulting from 
the tendency of the blood, in consequence of its liquidity, to de- 
scend as far as it can. 
This fearful affection, considered in many localities as a species 
of fever, and the true nature of which was first discovered by 
M. Renault, was formerly exceedingly fatal ; but the treatment 
which he recommended, in consequence of what he observed in 
our hospitals during the last two years, has considerably arrested 
its deadly course. It consists in the practice of small bleedings 
daily repeated, combined with the employment of substantial and 
strengthening food, and the administration of tonic and stimu- 
lating medicine. 
