t>. MC KACHRAN. 
30 
pathology, unless they could readily recognize a healthy from a 
diseased note, they would have wasted many valuable years. It 
was absolutely essential to every practitioner’s success that auscul¬ 
tation and percussion should be to him really and truly diagnostic 
aids. 
In the discussion that followed, Dr. James Bell, Surgeon of 
the Montreal General Hospital, fully corroborated Mr. Cum- 
ming’s views as to the necessity of becoming familiar with all 
chest sounds. He, in a few well-chosen remarks, gave the stu¬ 
dents some valuable ideas on the subject. 
After a vote of thanks to the essayists, the meeting adjourned 
till March 18th, when papers by Mr. E. J. Carter and Mr. Donald 
Campbell will be read. 
HORSE-POX—-VARIOLA EQUINA* 
By D. McEachran, F.K.V.C.S. 
Sir. —My attention has been called to numerous paragraphs 
which have appeared in Canadian and American newspapers 
referring to the epizootic disease at present prevailing in the city 
and vicinity, containing statements which are incorrect and calcu¬ 
lated to cause alarm among horse-dealers, which is altogether un¬ 
necessary. The disease is unquestionably variola equina , or horse- 
pox ; it is similar in its nature to vaccinia or cow-pox; it has no 
connection with small-pox of man, other than being a variolous 
disease, that is to say, when man is inoculated by the virus of 
horse-pox, small-pox is never produced, its effects on man are 
exactly the same as vaccination, and has the same protective power 
against small-pox. 
Horse pox and cow-pox differ from small-pox by the exan¬ 
themata being in all cases purely local; instances of its involv¬ 
ing the entire body are extremely rare in the horse ; the erup¬ 
tions are confined to the heels and pasterns, occasionally extend- 
* Front the Gazette, of Montreal. 
