228 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 
teridium is the contagium bearer in the two varieties of the 
disease, I do not know to what to attribute the want of suc¬ 
cess of my five inoculations, which were made with sero- 
sanguineous fluid of the tumours. Knowing that Bacteridia 
die a little while after death of the host, and attributing my 
want of success to this result, I took blood then from an 
animal which was still living, and inoculated, on each thigh, 
an adult rabbit, who has been wonderfully well ever since 
(during ten days) ; nevertheless, I took care to make large 
and deep incisions into the swelling, which the patient bore 
with such calmness and insensibility that it seemed like 
operating on a corpse; death only occurred five hours after 
these incisions or scarifications. Such want of success causes 
me to doubt the virulence of black quarter, though it is an¬ 
thrax. Having been assistant to M. Renault when that 
regretted teacher made experiments on contagious maladies, 
I cannot question my inoculative skill, so I asked whether 
the source of the virulence may not exist in the internal 
organs ? Also, to look more deeply into matters, could this 
variety of charbon, which occurs in certain places and at 
certain times in the year, especially when animals have only 
moist pastures, with deficient herbage, situations so poor 
that a looker-on would think the animals must eat the earth, 
so near it do they graze, be non-contagious in its character ? 
But this is only a theory, and I believe the nature of the 
disease will only be determined by carefully conducted 
inoculations and microscopical examinations. The experi¬ 
ments must he made in the country where it occurs. I 
made a limited inquiry in the infected locality, and have 
learned that no such disease is known in man; that yearling 
beasts only have been affected, and they all had been pas¬ 
tured in damp meadows near the canal and the river, land 
subject to inundations; that before the outbreak of the dis¬ 
ease so much rain fell that wheat could not be sown on 
account of the moisture of the ground; that animals pas¬ 
turing in dry meadows, and living there day and night, 
were not affected; that, strange to say, the disease generally 
only took one victim from each house, invariably a young 
animal, a fact which would lead us to suppose that it is more 
infectious than contagious, but if it is communicable by 
either means, adults are always most insusceptible; that 
also, even supposing all animals had been able to take germs 
from the pasturage in question an entire month of residence 
indoors was necessary to eliminate or expel the morbid 
principles ingested by those animals which remained 
healthy. 
