AN INQUIRY. 
331 
equine; it is contagious, and is transmitted in the act of copula¬ 
tion. It chiefly affects the generative organs, though it is not 
confined to these, but produces serious general disorders of a 
peculiar character, which most frequently terminate in death. It 
is more of a chronic than an acute malady; its course is slow and 
remittent, and affecting more or less every organ in the body, it 
produces a state of marasmus, hideous in the extreme, before 
death supervenes. 
NATURE. 
“ "Very little is known of the nature of this affection. Some 
authorities have imagined it to be allied to human syphilis, basing 
their supposition on the course of the local symptoms, some of 
the pathological alterations, and the serious character of these. 
This idea has been rejected by others, seeing that human syphilis 
is not transmissible to the horse by inoculation.” * * * 
Fleming adds in a foot note: “ The most recent experiments of 
Ilorand and Peucli are apparently conclusive that human syphilis 
cannot be transmitted to the domesticated animals.” This was 
written in 1874. 
“ Klebs, a well-known and thoroughly capable observer, culti¬ 
vates a spore which he finds in syphilitic blood (apparently a 
moving bacterium), produces a plant, inoculates it upon an ape, 
produces consecutive ulcers recalling the ulcers of syphilis clinic¬ 
ally and histologically, shows them to Professor Pick, who recog¬ 
nizes their resemblance to syphilitic ulcers, kills the animal, and 
finds between the dura mater and the-skull a material much 
resembling gumma, and a quantity of organic germs analagous to 
the forms which had been inoculated upon the animal. Klebs 
placed a portion of a freshly extirpated syphilitic chancre under 
the skin of another ape, December 29, 1877. The wound healed 
without suppuration; the glands swelled slightly. In six weeks 
the animal had fever, and shortly afterward a crop of papules 
came out upon the neck, head and face. The papules were flat, 
two or three millimetres in diameter, and of brownish-red color. 
These lesions scaled off, but did not ulcerate; and the papules, 
together with the fever, disappeared, leaving no trace. Nothing 
