EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
117 
THE BROWN INSTITUTION LECTURES OF 1879. 
The course of lectures which has recently been delivered 
at the University of London, in connection with the Brown 
Institution, is of very great interest to veterinary surgeons, 
in more senses than one. We have, therefore, reported 
them at some length in our Journal. Veterinary surgeons 
have assisted in the work upon which the course of lectures 
is based, and their aid has been most fully and justly acknow¬ 
ledged by Dr. Greenfield. Again, the matter touched 
upon by the lecturer has a direct value to members of our 
profession at home and abroad. Apart from the general in¬ 
terest with which we look upon the additions to comparative 
pathology and the general knowledge of infective processes, 
the question of unity or diversity of the diseases u black 
quarter ” (emphysema infectuosum ) and “ splenic apoplexy ” 
is most interesting, whether from a prophylactic or curative 
point of view. The detailed examination of septicaemia and 
pyaemia , in which the lecturer gave the results of the valu¬ 
able report by himself and colleagues, as recently presented 
to the Pathological Society (see ‘ Pathological Transactions,’ 
vol. xxx, 1879), was most instructive. The confusion in the 
minds of surgeons and pathologists concerning the true de¬ 
finitions of each of these diseases, as well as the question of 
whether they are distinct and separate pathological con¬ 
ditions, required much careful and laboured investigation, 
that some light might be thrown upon the matter. In this 
respect the conclusions of the above-mentioned Report are 
highly satisfactory. The specific organisms of these affec¬ 
tions are now no longer to us the mystery they were, since 
we have seen them stained with methylaniline, and may 
still see them represented most faithfully in the ‘ Trans¬ 
actions.’ 
We see that in these diseases, as in anthrax according to 
M. Toussaint’s researches, microphytes crowding the blood¬ 
vessels and the tissues may be the sole cause of formidable 
lesions, their power lying in their number and in their pene- 
