TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 303 
grease but a peculiar eruptive affection to which no name 
has been given. There is, therefore, an enormous error, and 
this is of great importance, inasmuch as it is an old opinion, 
w^hich dates back to Jenner, that the cowpox had its origin 
from the grease which affects the heels of the horse; but this 
view of Jenner is theoretical and not founded on experience, 
because the experiments he made had no such results. M. 
Bousquet in reporting in his treatise on vaccine the opinions 
of Jenner at first combated them, but the fact of Chartres 
and afterwards the other of Toulouse have convinced and 
brought him back to that opinion. I must observe that 
there is no similarity between the case of Chartres and that of 
Toulouse, and to convince you of this the history of Brissat 
needs only a more careful examination; he was a shoeing smith, 
had been vaccinated, and presented himself to M. Pictrat, with 
seven or eight pustules on the back of his hand. The fact 
that he had shod a horse some time before with greasy heels, 
led to the conclusion that he had been inoculated by it, hence 
the pustules; it being further demonstrated that the pustules 
were the cowpox, by re-inoculation of the virus. But it is 
remarkable that between the shoeing of this horse and the 
appearance of the pustules, not less than twenty-four days 
had elapsed, an unknown period of duration of incubation in 
cases of vaccination. I emphatically deny that the shoeing 
of the greasy heeled horse v\as the real cause of the pustules 
which were developed on the hand of Brissat. For my part 
I think that Brissat might have been affected with variola. 
To this it might be objected that he had no pustules on any 
part of his body except his hands, but it has not been shown 
that he has been examined, and therefore there is no proof 
that he might not have had some on other parts of his body. 
The fact quoted by Sacco, which has been invoked in this 
discussion, and by which we are led to trace the origin of the 
vaccine to furuncle (Juvart cutane) which has been divided 
into four distinct species, one of which is supposed to be 
epizootic, this one alone having the property of producing 
the vaccine; here also the natural supposition would apply, 
by supposing that the coachman, the subject of the observa¬ 
tion, had variola like Brissat. As to the fact of Toulouse, it 
has a very different signification from that of Chartres, and 
also different from what has been attributed to it at first. 
We all know how M. Leblanc discovered the error which had 
been committed. An eruptive epizootic disease prevailed at 
the time amongst the horses, which unfortunately w^as not 
properly characterised, but which from every appearance had 
a perfect analogy to variola ovina (sheep-pox). The deci- 
