TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 369 
ceptible of this disease? Is there any other cause than the 
amelioration which has taken place in the breed ? Or if not, 
it is evident that the cause must be looked for elsewhere. 
The author is of opinion that pleuro-pneumonia is partly the 
result of the improvements in agriculture and the esta¬ 
blishing of large distilleries. In the latter, the system of 
feeding renders the first three stomachs of the animal com¬ 
paratively useless, the fourth only receiving food, which 
is nearly liquid. For this sort of diet teeth or salivary 
glands would not be required. The liquid alimentary mass 
passes at once into the digestive or fourth stomach. The 
organization of the ox indicates that his food ought to be 
solid. That vast reservoir, the rumen, is intended to 
receive the grasses which the animal hastily crops. If this 
viscus is rendered useless, it must necessarily follow that the 
two others likewise become so to some extent. The abdomen 
consequently decreases in size, and fluid faeces are evacuated, 
and it is only after a time that the animals lay on flesh. 
The great object of feeders being to fatten the animals in the 
shortest possible time, they force them with abundance of 
the refuse of the distillery, and they thus receive an excess 
of an aliment which is contrary to their nature. This liquid 
mass, arriving in the intestines, is speedily absorbed and 
assimilated. Great activity is thereby brought about in the 
organs of respiration, circulation, &c. To counteract these 
baneful effects, frequent cleansing of the skin with the curry¬ 
comb and brush, and also a good supply of fresh air, are 
required ; but as these means would prevent the speedy fat¬ 
tening, therefore the contrary practice is adopted. The 
animals are seldom dressed, the air which circulates in their 
close, confined stables is hot and damp, the object of the 
feeders being to concentrate the flesh and fat to the interior. 
The animals soon begin to increase in size, and then is heard 
an occasional husky cough. In some of them the respira¬ 
tion becomes short, and the existence of pleuro-pneumonia is 
no longer to be doubted. Nature, in her efforts to form flesh 
and fat, has been unable to convert the whole of the liquid 
food into these products. The excess of matter absorbed, 
which the skin, impeded in its action, and also the kidneys 
and the lungs, have been unable to eliminate, must accumu¬ 
late somewhere. It is therefore not surprising that a con¬ 
siderable exudation should be produced in the lungs. 
Professor Gluge, of the University of Brussels, was the 
first who expressed an opinion that the exudation in the inter- 
lobul ary tissue existed before the inflammation of the lobules. 
From which it results that the inflammation of the paren- 
xxxv. 24 
