384 EASTERN COUNTIES VBTERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 
exercise of the highest culture we can command, it is a wide and 
varied field for the exercise of our powers of thought, and one 
worthy of all our energies.” I speak this to the honour of that 
gentleman, and to the college in which he labours. 
To consider this section of my subject and to grasp its full 
importance, we must remember we are doing battle with an in- 
siduous, inscrutable, and deadly enemy. All the knowledge we 
have gained by late experience has to be brought to bear upon it. 
There are two lines of tactics for us to take. The one is to 
openly attack it and destroy it; the other is to put on an armour, 
so to speak, and defy it. Let us consider the first proposition. 
We have ascertained what our enemy is, its nature, from whence 
it proceeds. We have also ascertained how it is to be met, and 
how it is to be vanquished. 
We have seen how Professor Lister can rid the wounds and 
also the surroundings of the septic element, and when operations 
are performed and wounds explored. With the care and precision 
he describes there is, comparatively speaking, an immunity from 
danger. If that is true as to wounds, the inference is almost 
irresistable that the same success may be achieved in the air of 
the stable and in the hospital. I have a good hope that appro¬ 
priate antiseptics which kill these germs, and organisms outside 
the body may also be found to exert a similar destructive power 
on them when they have gained access inside the body, and by 
these means may cure or mitigate some of the most serious and 
most virulent forms of disease that attacks man and animals. 
I am told by my friend Mr. Thomas Taylor, Y.S., of Man¬ 
chester, that he has achieved a great advantage, and, as he believes, 
has freed an infected stable (in which a most malignant form 
of influenza infection existed) of its infection. He employed 
chlorine gas, or, more properly speaking, chlorous acid gas. He 
considers that this gas destroys the contagium or germs, or what¬ 
ever it may be, in the air in the stable. He says, “ I assure you 
it is a practical fact that in every place where I used it I had 
the very best success.” He further says it is a poisonous gas, 
and great caution must be exercised. The horses must be re¬ 
moved out of the stable during the fumigation, and not put into 
it again until all traces of the chlorous acid gas has passed away. 
The mode he adopts is this: He places a vessel near the ceiling 
of the stable, into which he pours some hydrochloric acid, then 
drops into it a few crystals of chlorate of potash or permanganate 
of potash instead; he then makes the stable as air tight as 
possible; the gas, being heavy, will roll over the edge of the vessel, 
descend, and permeate the air throughout the whole building. 
In stables infected with glanders and farcy I have found great 
benefit in the use of coke fires, in moveable grates. I light the fires 
outside the stable until the smoke and sulphurous fumes have 
passed off, and when white hot carry them into each stall for half 
an hour. It not only dries the stall and the air, but it draws 
into it and consumes all the infected air in the stall; an equally 
