412 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS, 
Bulletin de la Societe Centrale de Medecine Veterinaire .— 
M. P. Cagny communicated a paper on bacteria infec¬ 
tion. He says that from the researches of MM. Pasteur 
and Toussaint he has been able to explain facts which had 
hitherto seemed inexplicable. “ Thus, in a commune where 
charbon is almost unknown, after the introduction of a new 
herd of working beasts in a few days charbon appeared. 
All the herd was handed over to the butcher, and, in spite of 
professional advice, the owner did not disinfect his stalls. 
At the end of two months he bought some more animals, 
which, after a short period of life in these stalls, became 
affected with charbon. They were sold and the stables dis¬ 
infected, and since then the disease has disappeared from the 
farm. Another fact tends to the same conclusion: on a 
farm where no death had ever occurred from splenic apo¬ 
plexy six foals remained for a whole year in an inclosure 
without injury. Some years after, in 1870, the proprietor 
brought thither cattle affected with splenic apoplexy from a 
farm where the disease was prevalent; some cows died and 
were buried there. In 1872 four foals were placed there in 
November, but in the following May three of these were 
attacked, the fourth was saved by removal. In 1875 some 
Dutch cattle were placed there, of which one died of splenic 
apoplexy. All these animals had up to that time never left 
a healthy farm, and their fellows who were not taken into 
the dangerous inclosure remained free from the disease. 
Also M. SignoVs work should be placed in relation with 
that of MM. Pasteur and Toussaint ; M. Bouley gave a 
resume of that gentleman’s experience on the f Virulent 
condition of the blood of healthy horses, killed by poleaxe or 
by asphyxia ’ in the Resell for 1876, p. 16. It proves that 
blood obtained from the vena cava or vena portae acquires, 
under certain conditions, properties which render it fatal to 
sheep and goats inoculated with it. f Has it become septic 
under the influence of the agents which the mesenteric veins 
have acquired in the intestine and brought into the vena 
portae?’ suggests M. Bouley. Now, with regard to the 
septic vibrios these too M. Pasteur has studied, and 
he considers that septicaemia is always the consequence 
of the introduction into the organism of germs obtained from 
without. But this is not allowed by all surgeons, and a 
short time ago at the Academy of Medicine M. Maurice 
Perrin, while accepting the conclusions of M. Pasteur as far 
as they bear on wounds always more or less exposed to the 
air, hesitated to accept them as bearing on septicaemia when 
proved in connection with certain abscesses deeply seated, 
