506 
THE VETERINARIAN, JULY 1, 1879. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat.—ClCERO. 
BOVINE LUNG EEVER. 
Under the heading which we quote, "Bovine Lung Fever,” 
the National Live Stock Journal has a long article by Prot. 
James Law on the subject of pleuro-pneumonia among cattle 
in the United States of America. With the general account 
of the introduction and progress of the disease in the States 
we have no fault to find ; but the remarks of the writer on the 
subject of mediate contagion in pleuro-pneumonia appear to 
require some notice from us, as they refer to our own observa¬ 
tions and experiments, as well as to those lately conducted at 
the Brown Institution. The writer remarks, "Years ago, Pro¬ 
fessors Simonds and Brown advanced the hypothesis that this 
disease could not beconveyed from animal to animal by mediate 
contagion, but that, in order^ to its transmission, the sick 
animal must be brought' into direct contact with the healthy. 
It is difficult to see how such an absolute claim can be ad¬ 
vanced in the face of the every-day observation that, when a 
sick animal is introduced into one end of a stable, the plague 
often skips many intervening ones to strike down a beast near 
the farthest end of the building. In such a case the air is 
the medium through which the virus is carried, and the 
contagion is unquestionably mediate.” 
The experiments conducted at the Brown Institution in 
September, 1876, March, 1877, and August, 1878, by Dr. 
Burdon Sanderson and Professor Duguid, in which healthy 
cattle were exposed to the emanations from diseased lungs 
without any ill result, are quoted as disproving contagion 
through the air. But one or several failures to convey a 
disease is no proof that the disease in question is not con¬ 
tagious. I might quote the example of the enthusiastic non- 
contagionists who clothed themselves with the linen fresh 
from the bodies of cholera patients, lay with them in the 
