546 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 
exact reproduction of the original disease, identical with it 
in form and in properties, or whether that morbid state 
does not consist simply of a number of local lesions deter¬ 
mined by irritant scattered spines, and capable of terminat¬ 
ing in resolution, health becoming completely restored. In 
support of this last theory a doctor of Nancy has brought for¬ 
ward experiments which are of high interest,andseemtoleadto 
the conclusion that the disease following inoculation with 
tubercle is not essentially tuberculosis, but something which 
imitates its form but not its tenacity, being capable of disap¬ 
pearing with time, and of leaving the organism in full health 
when once it has disappeared. This difference in result 
necessarily leads to a surmise of some differences of con¬ 
ditions under which the experiments have been performed. 
Is tuberculosis identical in all species, as are glanders and 
rabies? and has it the same characters as regards con¬ 
tagiousness in all its stages and in all species ? Are the 
phenomena which result from inoculation always the same, 
or, on the contrary, may they not vary according to the 
species furnishing the matter for inoculation, or used for 
experiment, or according to the time which has elapsed 
since the death of the animal from which the matter for 
inoculation has been taken ? This last matter is doubtless 
of great importance as influencing the results. Consi¬ 
dered from a general point of view contagion, indeed, can 
only be considered as a manifestation of life, whether it pro¬ 
ceed from the multiplication of vibrios, whose activity super¬ 
sedes that of the anatomical elements, as has-been shown to 
be the case in certain diseases, or whether it depends on the 
proliferation of cellules as, perhaps, occurs in eruptive dis¬ 
eases. In this last matter we are as yet only in a position 
to surmise, but it seems probable that contagion occurs in 
various ways, and that eruptive diseases, as variola, depend 
on an active element different from that of such infectious 
maladies as anthrax; in other words, that all contagious 
maladies are not parasitic. But whatever the nature of the 
contagion-element, whether parasitic or cellular, that agent 
is alive, and the disease which results from it is nothing 
else than the manifestation of its activity in the organism 
which has received it. It is because that element, in con¬ 
sequence of its activity, multiplies in the infected organism 
that a morbid state results from this, and is more or less 
serious according as the receptive organism is more or less 
favorable to its development. The proof that the morbid 
state following a contagion indeed results from the multi¬ 
plication of living beings is that, if the organism which has 
