SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS. 229 
According to my observations external charbon differs in 
its nature from splenic fever , and is very far from being an 
eliminatory crisis, favorable and critical for the organism. 
It is a special disease, always fatal and easy to distinguish 
from inflammation, which causes neither prostration, absolute 
loss of appetite, nor mortality. Those who boast of having 
cured black quarter, empirics especially, have only had to 
deal with inflammations which may be caused to disappear 
very rapidly In this disease, external charbon, prostration 
is marked even before the appearance of the swelling. At 
the time of swelling the animal, as far as sensibility is con¬ 
cerned, is but little more than a corpse, so that you can 
make sections with a bistoury without the animal noticing it. 
Under these circumstances you have simply to order that a 
grave be dug and announce to the owner and the empirics 
who are generally present that the animal is beyond hope. 
If external charbon and splenic fever were of the same 
nature inoculations from one ought to produce sometimes the 
former disease, sometimes the latter, but this is far from 
being so. Also, in the outbreak in this place, out of ten 
fatal cases not one was splenic fever, and all cases were 
alike, there was, so to speak, a mathematical exactness about 
them even in the choice of the seat of attack, which in nine 
cases out of ten was the shoulders, and once the thigh. In 
another town, six kilometres distant, splenic fever appeared 
sporadically from time to time, and I was never called to see 
a case even to suggest sanitary measures. The animals 
heaved at the flanks, the heart’s action was turbulent, some¬ 
times the urine was bloody, and death occurred in from 
fifteen to thirty minutes after the attack. The empirics, 
who flourish in all these parts and outdo all veterinary sur¬ 
geons, pretended death was due to fluid accumulated around 
the heart, and took good care not to make autopsies. I was 
sent by the Sous prefet , escorted by the local police, and 
showed the people that I was not afraid to open a carcase 
even when there is risk of fatal infection. The necropsy 
taught me with what disease I had to do, and since light 
was thus thrown upon the matter the empirics have been 
anything but quiet. To live we must instruct them ; we 
sow and they reap; a strange state of affairs which leads us 
to the conclusion that to be successful among such more 
philosophy is necessary !” These notes of M. Vernaut are 
very interesting, not only from a pathological point of view, 
but also because they give us an instance of a practitioner 
involved in diagnostic difficulties, not so much from the 
actual state of affairs as from subjection to a medical doctrine. 
