330 
F. C. WILKINSON. 
day, and if by any amount of agitation we can have any influ¬ 
ence upon proper legislation let 11s bestir ourselves, and in time 
eradicate the worst disease common to man and beast. 
INFECTIOUS PNEUMONIA. 
By F. C. Wilkinson, D. V. S. 
A Paper read before the New Hampshire Veterinary Medical Association. 
Infectious pneumonia is now generally regarded by the 
leading clinical authorities and pathologists, in this country and 
in Europe, as a specific infectious disease. 
Green, in his article on “ Inflammation of the Lungs,” in 
Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine, says : “ It is maintained by a 
great number of observers that, like the specific fevers, it is due 
to a specific cause.” 
Pneumonia, whilst differing from these fevers in not being 
contagious, resembles them in the typical character of its clin¬ 
ical phenomena, and to a less extent of its local lesion. The 
changes in the lung occurring in pneumonia cannot be induced 
by artificial injury of the organ, and it must therefore be ad¬ 
mitted that there is something special in the inflammatory process. 
This u something special ” has been demonstrated by researches, 
and it is the object of this paper to give you, gentlemen, a slight 
historical account of the development of knowledge which has 
been obtained, in reference to this specific infectious agent, and 
of the experimental evidence upon which the claim is founded 
that the micro-organism referred to bears an etiological relation 
to the disease in question. Evidently, if pneumonia is a specific 
infectious disease, the micro-organism which causes it is widely 
distributed and the development of an attack depends rather up¬ 
on secondary predisposing and exciting causes than upon the 
accidental introduction of the specific agent. It cannot be main¬ 
tained that the disease, as a general rule, is transmitted from 
animal to animal, by personal contagion. Clinical experience is 
entirely opposed to this view, although there is ample evidence 
that it may occur as an epidemic among animals which are ex- 
