244 
Translations and Reviews of Continental 
Veterinary Journals. 
By W. Eiines, M.R.C.V.S., Loudon. 
Clmi/jue Veterinaire, January^ 1863. 
ORIGIN OE COW-POX. 
{^Continuedfrom p. 181.) 
M. Bous(piel .—The details of the experiments which are 
embodied in the report on the practice of vaccination in 
France for the year 1858^ you have already too much in 
your memory to render it necessary to repeat them here. You 
all know that neither of us obtained anything but negative 
results; and^ as Pascal remarks_, one is more persuaded by 
what one sees than by what is reported, and it is ahvays a 
little difficult to renounce one’s owm evidence to take up that 
of another. But in this instance the leanings of the experi- 
mentors w ere to som.e extent negatived by the uncertainty of 
tlie nature of the malady. Entirely taken up in the research 
of grease, tliey were exact in their diagnosis the more they 
deviated from that position. It would have been better had 
they taken up the investigation at haphazard, as they would 
have had greater chance of arriving at correct data j and it is 
perhaps to chance that the honour of the suecessful, though 
rare, results of diflerent kinds of inoculation which history 
records, are due. It is thus generally agreed that if the vaccine 
virus had its origin in the horse, it was from the disease called 
grease, by wdiich the legs are sometimes affected. Such was 
undoubtedlv the opinion of the medical faculty of Toulouse. 
This, too, must have been the opinion of M. Leblanc, whose 
zeal took him to the locality of the epizootic. L^nfortunately 
he arrived a little too late, for nearly all was over before he 
got there, and what he saw of the malady could only enable 
him to aj^preciate its nature; but he saw enough to declare it 
w^as not the grease. Its progress had been too regular and 
too rapid, and, above all, the cure too easy. Hardly, as he 
said, did it reach the second week, which is not the case 
wnth grease. On the other hand, referring to its de'l/icf, he 
found that it commenced w ith a fever in the same manner 
as acute affections in general, and that this fever had 
nothing of the nature of reactive fevers, for it decreased sen¬ 
sibly at the first appearance of the cru])tion. Further, the 
disease w’as not confined to the legs, but spread, though 
gradually, to other parts of the body. By these signs, M. 
