304 
THE ETIOLOGY OF BLACKLEG, ETC. 
Liverpool Veterinary Medical Association by Mr. Henry 
Barnes on blackleg ( Veterinarian , February, 1872), that 
gentleman says, “ The predisposing causes of this disease are 
according to the preceding views, anything that induces too 
rapid a growth in the young animal, such as rich and succu¬ 
lent food, the natural result of an early spring, in which the 
grasses are forward, and full of moisture.” “ Those who 
have directed their attention to the subject have agreed that 
the principal proximate causes of quarter ill are a deficiency 
of fibrin and an otherwise vitiated state of the blood.” 
It also appears to be indigenous to certain farms, usually 
where the land is undrained, and the herbage coarse, rough, 
and innutritive.” It seldom appears on farms where drain¬ 
age and better cultivation has improved the quality of the 
pasture.” 
It is also a popular idea among agriculturists that the 
disease is caused from the amount of too stimulating food 
young animals may receive. 
The preceding quotations plainly show that British veteri¬ 
narians, as a body, consider the producing cause of black 
quarter to be the food , or rather the quality a?id the excessive 
quantity of it. If we consider the evidence upon which this 
opinion is founded, we speedily find a discrepancy. Thus, 
if produced by the luxuriant grapes of rich alluvial soil, or by 
highly stimulating foods, we could hardly expect to find it 
occurring on coarse, undrained, innutritive pastures; but 
that it does so we too frequently experience. Again, if the 
disease is the effect of poverty of the blood and of deficiency 
of fibrin, is not this inconsistent with the fact that frequently 
the best animals of the herd are its victims ? But it is hardly 
necessary to pause and criticise; rather let us pass on to the 
consideration of the views adopted by our continental brethren, 
and the facts which have induced them to repudiate the 
opinion they once held in common with ourselves. This 
disease occurs as an epizootic and as an enzootic, as we find 
in the chapter on the f Etiology of Charbon/ by Renault and 
Reynal ( f Nouveau Diet, de Med. Vet.’). 
The principal outbreaks in France are stated to have taken 
place as follows :— 
1731. In Auvergne, Bourbonnais, and Languedoc. Studied 
by Sauvage, and described by him under the name of gloss 
anthrax (‘Nosologia Methodica,’ t. ii, p. 360.) 
1757. An epizootic of the same nature appeared in Brie. 
0 Audouin Chaiguebrun/ Paris, 1762.) 
1763. In the greater part of Marennes. (‘Nicolan. Mem. 
