130 
W. L. WILLIAMS. 
meat inspection in America, so that “ established facts,” etc., 
may be very widely different, and what may prove advisable 
or necessary in Germany does not mark out an essential line 
for action in America. 
Preliminary to the exceptions Dr. Schwartzkopff offers to 
the position taken in the report relating to the transmissi- 
bility of actinomycosis, he objects to the definition of con¬ 
tagious* as “ unnatural and strained,”f and denies that the 
word “ contagion ” has changed in its meaning, or that our 
conception of its meaning has changed during two centuries, 
but that it now means as it did then, that “ a healthy animal 
must come in contact with a diseased animal to contract a 
particular disease.” 
To say that our conception of contagion has been station¬ 
ary for two centuries is equivalent almost to saying that I 
medical science has been sleeping during that time, for if we ' 
have made any advances at all, if we have discarded old con- ! 
ceptions and applied newer and more experienced meanings 
to words, surely our conception of contagious (or infectious) I 
has undergone a wonderful evolution. But contagion does ■ 
not bear to us the same conception as two centuries ago, and 
did not mean then that in order for an animal to become 
affected with a contagious disease, it must come in contact, 
or even near to, one affected with the same malady, and even 
writers of the present generation have not so held. Fleming 
maintained in his Veterinary Sanitary Science and Police, ! 
that glanders could originate spontaneously, i.e. other benign 
diseases like strangles, etc., could, under certain surroundings,! 
develop into glanders; but Dr. Fleming admits that medical: 
science grows, and cheerfully owns that he erred and that his 3 
conception of contagion is far different now from what it was! 
two or three decades ago, and his admission represents not 
the views of a misguided individual, but an enormous change; 
in the knowledge of the medical world and a total recon- =■! 
struction of our conception of contagion. 
Even now no authority holds that contact of animal with an¬ 
imal, as stated by Dr. Sch wartkopff, is at all necessary for trans- i 
* Journal, Vol. xii. p. 538. IReview, Vol. xvi. p. 5. 
