156 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 
however much they might try. In the lengthy and im¬ 
portant memoir which M. Baillet read on this subject he has 
scarcely been able to conceal the very natural tendency to 
exaggerate the importance of the post of veterinary inspector 
of the meat market. He would have this officer permanent 
and immovable; when once he has been elected by competitive 
examination, he gives him a kind of discretionary power in 
all questions relating to the use of dead or live meat; autho¬ 
rity should be vested in his hands; his judgment should be 
law. But such exaggeration would be prejudicial to our 
cause. It is doubtless advantageous that veterinarians be 
charged with inspection of meat. Breeders, consumers, 
officials would all benefit in this inspection being conducted 
by men combining the double qualification which theoretical 
knowledge and practical experience give. But the duty of 
the inspector should be simply that of an expert; on the 
authorities should fall the duty of deciding what consequences 
result from the decision by the inspector. M Viseur 
sustained before the Congress the opinion which he has 
developed in many published papers on the importance of 
the facts revealed by autopsies in slaughter-houses and 
knackers’ yards as indicating the hotbeds of contagion and 
leading to measures to eradicate it. This practical means is 
excellent, and has already produced good results, but it will 
attain satisfactory efficiency only by becoming general; 
otherwise it will only have the effect of sending diseased 
animals from inspected to non-inspected places of slaughter. 
This happens at Arras—a prefectoral decree acting in Pas- 
de-Calais, orders inspection of the stables whence come 
animals whose bodies after death exhibit the lesions of a 
contagious malady, such as pleuro-pneumonia; but this 
decree does not affect the department of the North, hence 
owners who have any fear of being shown up ” by the 
autopsies of their animals have not brought them to Arras, 
but have had them slaughtered in those towns where 
inspection simply referred to the quality and appearance of 
the meat. Uniformity of sanitary measures is then in this 
respect as necessary as in regard to living animals; that 
sanitary inspection may produce all its useful effects. What¬ 
ever may be the results to which it actually will give rise, 
M. Viseur is not the less deserving as suggesting the idea, 
which may be useful in the future, of making use of 
information derived from the carcases to aid in the search 
for places whence sick animals come, and for thus exposing 
cases of outbreak of contagious disease which the proprietors 
of animals are anxious to conceal in order to avoid the 
