88 
EDITORIAL. 
the system Diatto is, and on several streets where it is applied 
accidents which have varied in intensity from partial paralysis 
to complete electrocution and death have been observed in quite 
sufficient number (some 34 in a month, I believe, on one line) 
to create severe disputes, lawsuits, refusal of payments by in¬ 
surance companies, etc. 
Of course, the subject is full of interest, and veterinarians 
are very much perplexed, as the effects of such electricity are 
not very minutely known, the symptoms which result from an 
interrupted or from a continuous current the characteristic 
brain, if any, that excite all these are points of great impor¬ 
tance, and it is with the hope of their explanation that a com¬ 
mittee has been appointed to carry out a series of experiments 
on horses which would be placed as near as possible in the 
conditions met in the street by those traveling upon a track 
upon which the Diatto system of electricity is employed. 
Being a member of the Societe de Medecine Veterinaire 
Pratique, I have had the honor to be named as one of the 
committee and to assist in the first experiments which were car¬ 
ried out on two horses, and to witness the post-mortem exami¬ 
nations which were made at the laboratory of the chair of 
pathological anatomy at Alfort. 
As that first experiment was only a preliminary, and is to be 
followed by others, I will postpone to a later day the minute 
description of the manifestations exhibited by the horses when 
they were submitted to currents of 550 and 650 volts ; but for 
the present I will only say that one of the horses stood six ap¬ 
plications before he was killed by a seventh, having received 
550 volts at each time, and that the second horse received first 
a shock of 650 volts, a second of 700 and a third of the same 
number, which killed him. 
The post-mortems were made the same day and witnessed by 
a large number of veterinarians. But as stated in the conclu¬ 
sions of previous experiments made by MM. Prevost and Bat- 
telli, there were no characteristic lesions—in fact, it may be said 
that there were none. 
