462 THOUGHTS ON FLEURO-PNEUMONIA IN CATTLE. 
marbled stage, a condition which I consider positively irre¬ 
vocable. But if the air is only feebly impregnated with this 
gas, or whatever else it may be, at the time, then the effects 
are feeble also, and probably in some cases only transient in 
their duration; these cases are curable . All other affections of 
the chest would appear to have merged themselves into this 
type of disease ; but I maintain that in no one case can pleuro¬ 
pneumonia be in existence many days without its effect be¬ 
coming apparent. This conviction has grown upon me still 
more during this very interesting discussion, and through the 
various conversations I have had with other experienced and 
enlightened men. One of the most respectable and intelligent 
butchers in Manchester told me the other day that for a great 
number of years he has been in the habit of buying for 
slaughtering twenty cows a week, and that he had found the 
lungs affected with “ pleuro ” in only one instance where it 
was not apparent when the animal w r as alive. 
Method of Prevention and Cure . 
I trust my readers have not arrived at the conclusion that 
no mode of prevention or cure can ever be effected. If it be 
suggested that human science can give no solution to this 
question, that men of extraordinary powers of mind cannot 
lessen the difficulty, we occupy a most humiliating position 
indeed. Such is, however, I believe, the generally received 
opinion, but I also believe that no delusion can be more 
common or more baseless. It can be shown by antecedent 
progress that human beings, all but superhuman in their 
natural powers, have conceived, exercised, and determined 
great eventualities and discoveries. This, then, is a very proper 
inquiry for science to press on, for to the man of energy 
possibilities become probabilities, and probabilities certainties. 
It would appear that powerful diffusible stimulants, in the 
first stage, as medicaments, are most effectual. The sugges¬ 
tions I am about to make have been upon my mind for some 
time. Thirty-three years ago all the scientific societies in 
England were engaged in discussing the advantages of railway 
trains having sharp ends like unto ships, but it was proved 
that a train carried upon it and around it a certain load of at¬ 
mospheric air, and that the pressure was nearly the same under 
all circumstances. I also remember that when the question 
of consuming the dense, thick, black smoke of our chimneys 
was under discussion at our town council, one of our ablest 
chemists told them it was not that dense, black smoke, but 
the thin invisible sulphurous smoke, that was so prejudicial 
to health. Again, in the Valley of Death in Java, it is well 
