222 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 
from the very interesting memoire of the Turin professor, 
which relate to the characters of the blood in cholera of 
fowls, and to the nature of the contagium principle of that 
disease. This is M. Toussaint’s letter. 11 In the last number 
of the Recueil, M. Megnin has thought right to publish a 
study on typhoid fever of the pig and typhus of fowls, as he 
has been pleased to call it. I do not wish to here discuss 
the fitness of the word typhus , which M. Megnin, following 
Klein and Perroncito, applies to these diseases, but I cannot 
help regretting, presuming that I have some acquaintance 
with matters of this kind, that such premature changes in 
the names of diseases should be made, since they only seem 
to complicate the already obscure nomenclature of certain 
diseases. I allow that the term cholera or charbon which 
have been applied to the disease of fowls are not entirely 
satisfactory, but they are no more inexact than the term 
typhus , and I do not see what benefit it can be to reject 
them before the disease to which they have been applied is 
perfectly known and placed in its proper position on the list 
of parasitic disorders. I affirm that the disease has no 
analogy with the pathological state of man known as 
typhus and typhoid. The word typhus, too, gives no indi¬ 
cation of the nature of the diseases to which it is applied, 
since it literally only means c stupor.’ M. Megnin thinks 
that M. Perroncito first saw the cholera parasite, which he 
has described and figured in a memoire which appeared in 
1878. It is certain that the learned Turin professor pub¬ 
lished a figure of the blood of the fowl in which, in spite of 
defects of engraving, we can strictly recognise the micro- 
bia, but it is equally certain that M. Perroncito attri¬ 
buted to these granules neither the significance nor the 
value which I have given them. M. Megnin may assure 
himself of this by reading the following passage in the 
memoire. “ The white globules are almost always inter¬ 
mingled with very minute granules with highly refractive 
margins. In the blood plasma occur more or less numerous 
granules subjected to the Brownian movement, and also 
free oval nodules. We have never found either Bacteria or 
vibriones.” A number of other passages in the memoire 
allude to the granules without indicating their importance. 
M. Perroncito, therefore, gave proof of the fact of their pre¬ 
sence, but their significance escaped him. His work was 
presented to the Academy on 2nd February, 1878, but the 
volume of Proceedings appeared only in April, 1879. Then 
only I became aware of the memoire of my Turin colleague. 
I recognised the parasite on the 6th October, 1878, and at 
