300 TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
or ten days before in a case of vaccination, and had not even 
been wiped after the operation, it would then have been unable 
to produce an eruption or the slightest manifestation of cowpox 
whatever, because the minimum quantity of virus which might 
have been preserved on its surface would have become per¬ 
fectly desiccated. Now the result of a great number of expe¬ 
riments I have made with all the virulent matter I have been 
able to obtain, amongst others that of the variola in sheep, 
which has so great an analogy with the smallpox in man, 
that whichever way you may inoculate, even the most active 
when fresh, produce not the slightest effect, either general or 
local, when they are in a state of desiccation. The fact of 
M. Lafosse therefore preserves all the importance that has 
been attributed to it, and which is recognised in the report of 
M. Bousquet; to wit, that it is the inoculation of the matter 
from the mare of M. Corail which has produced the manifes¬ 
tation of cowpox in the heifer which had been subjected to this 
operation. But it has only that importance to a certain extent, 
and if we are allowed to presume, it does not prove that the 
malady by which this mare was affected, was the same as 
that which characterised the epizootic observed by M. Sarrans ; 
neither does it prove that the malady of which this epizootic 
consisted if inoculated, would have produced the vaccine 
virus in the cow. As to the question whether the affection 
of the mare of M. Corail and that observed by M. Sarrans 
were really the affection known and designated by veteri¬ 
nary practitioners as grease (eaux au jambes), doubt is 
impossible; evidently it was not grease. From simple notes 
addressed to me by M. Lafosse, and before M. Leblanc 
went to Toulouse, I had expressed doubts in this respect, 
and announced them to the Academy at the sitting of the 
26th of June, 1860. The details given since by our colleague 
in the report of the commission of Toulouse, the synoptic 
comparison transcribed from it in the report of M. Bousquet, 
by their symptomatic differences do not likewise allow of 
any doubt; I will however point out a difference no less im¬ 
portant taken from the etiology: that is, it is rare that the 
grease, which is not contagious, has any other cause than 
the long-continued effect of the acrid mud and irritating wet 
of the streets on the skin of the legs. The proof of this is 
that in these large towns where a better system of paving 
and draining now exists; as, for instance, in Paris where the 
streets are now better paved and provided with lateral 
gutters instead of one only in the centre, in which the horses 
were obliged constantly to plunge, and also the frequent 
flushing of the streets which prevents the mud from accumu- 
