420 TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
Annales cle Medecine Veterinaire , Bruxelles, April 1861. 
REPORT ON THE ESSAYS ON INFLUENZA, BOTH IN 
MAN AND ANIMALS. 
By M. Verheyen. 
The question put by the Academy for consideration was 
to determine the nature and etiology of the malady in the 
horse, called influenza; to point out its relations to typhoid 
affections in man, and also the most appropriate medical 
treatment. 
Only two memoirs have been sent in, one written in 
French, and bearing for motto, “II n’y a pas d’effet sans cause;” 
the other in Latin, with many German quotations, having 
for its epigraph, “ Una est certissime medicina et hominis et 
veterinarian 
The word influenza is Italian, and is used to designate 
catarrhal fever in man, and is synonymous with “ grippe,” 
which, according to J. Frank, is derived from the Polish 
word “ crypka,” which signifies a cold. The chronology of 
catarrhal epidemics ascends to the thirteenth century. From 
their medical history we learn that each of them assumed a 
special physiognomy, but that, in spite of their complications, 
they were always accompanied by certain phenomena which 
allow of their being classed with the grippe or influenza. The 
affection of the mucous membrane of the respiratory pas¬ 
sages, more or less extensive, or concentrated in the shape of 
angina, bronchitis, broncho-pneumonia, &c., predominate as 
the derangement of the digestive organs present certain phe¬ 
nomena. The catarrh of the mucous membrane of those 
organs may acquire that intensity which would react on the 
respiratory apparatus symptomatically. In all the maladies 
■which collectively affect the organism, notwithstanding the 
epidemical influence, the individual predisposition does not 
lose its claim, neither does it efface the principal type which 
persists, more or less modified. These modifications are found 
to exist in all epidemics. History has preserved an account of 
them, and faithfully transmitted it to posterity. The great 
obstacle to the study of comparative medicine is in the isolation 
of the two branches of the same trunk, which have extended 
their twigs in different directions instead of entwining them¬ 
selves ; hence the origin of the confusion which the term in¬ 
fluenza has caused in veterinary nosology ; however, if we 
take a retrospect of the history of epizootics, we cannot deny 
that the horse has been more than once, like man, attacked 
