EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. . 507 
same beds, and even drank their blood with impunity. The 
results did not prove that cholera was non-virulent, but only 
that they did not furnish the conditions necessary to induce 
contagion. We now know that if they had experimented 
with the bowel dejections of cholera patients cholera would 
have been produced, in all susceptible subjects, on given 
days after their passage. 
It seems highly probable that a flaw no less serious 
entered into the experiments conducted at the Brown Insti¬ 
tution. If the emanations from the lungs of a sick animal 
can infect a healthy cow at the farther end of a long stable, 
there seems no good reason to conclude that the fresh lungs, 
warm from the sick beast, cannot give off emanations viru¬ 
lent to any- susceptible animal. This question of the sucep- 
tibility of the healthy animals exposed is the first that sug¬ 
gests itself; and in the report of Dr. Burdon Sanderson and 
Professor Duguid there is not a hint that this susceptibility 
had been tested. Had the animals that resisted exposure 
to the diseased lungs been afterwards infected by contact 
with sick cattle, the claim that the lungs could not convey 
the disease after their removal from the body would have 
been rendered much more plausible. At present, the 
thousand cases of the conveyance of the virus through the 
air of a stable must be held as more authoritative than the 
three negative results from the diseased lungs at the Brown 
Institution. 
b. Contagion by Pulmonary Exudation introduced into 
the Nose, —Prof. Baldwin, of Glasnevin, informs me that, 
many years ago, he soaked a sponge in the liquid from a 
diseased lung and stuffed it into the nostril of a sound animal, 
which, in due time, showed all the symptoms of the lung 
fever. 
c. Contagion carried by Attendants. —As this has been 
warmly debated on the other side of the Atlantic, I shall 
record two cases which ought of themselves to settle the 
question. 
1st. In the winter of 1847-8, infected oxen were un¬ 
wittingly purchased to be fed on Pitcox, East Lothian, 
Scotland. The disease spread through the whole herd, 
