356 
NEW RESEARCHES UPON PLEURO PNEUMONIA, ETC. 
that is the smallest number, while they admit it, believe that this 
affection may, in peculiar cases, originate in the concurrence of 
external circumstances and without the contact of a sick animal 
carrying the germ of the disease. 
At the time of the publication of my first paper on pleuro¬ 
pneumonia, Huzard, Delafoud, and many others, had denied the 
contagion; Yerheyen and Fallot doubled and did not admit the 
existence of a virus. Fallot, however, one of the most elevated 
and enlightened minds of this learned body, said in a report made 
in 1852 upon a paper that I had sent to the Academy at that time: 
“All the theoretical views followed by Mr. Willems in his 
treatise are dominated by a question of fact, in which the com¬ 
mission has not to inquire. In it, all is subordinated to the exist¬ 
ence in exudative pleuro-pneumonia, of a virus transmissible and apt 
to communicate a disease similar to that of which it is the product, 
and, to admit such a virus, it would be at least necessary to have 
the proof that the transmission has taken place; as long as we 
have not, the existence of the virus remains doubtful, and all the 
consequences deduced from it, all hypotheses, ingenious or not, 
conceived to explain now the efficacy of inoculation, and again, 
the reverses which followed it, fall from lack of support.” 
Since that time, the solution of the question has made immense 
progress, and in the actual condition of disease who would dare to 
deny the contagion ? 
All those who have seriously studied that question admit it as 
certain, such as Chabert, Henry Bouley, Saint-Cyr, Mathieu, 
Sanson, Chenier, Reignauldt, Tabourin, Chauveau, Bollinger, 
Ulrich, Gerlach, Hering, Zundel, Wellenbergh, Jennes, Simonds, 
Gamgee, Bruce, Cox, (of Dublin) Fleming, &c., the veterinar\ r 
school of Lyons, those of Germany and Netherlands, all the official 
commissions, Belgian, French, German, Italian, Netherlands, &c. 
Here is, amongst those, the opinion of the French scientific 
commission, of which M. Magendie was president and M. Henry 
Bouley, reporter: 
“ Epizootic peripneumonia of horned cattle is capable of 
transmitting itself by cohabitation from diseased to healthy ani¬ 
mals of the same species.” 
