TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PAPERS. 
231 
from Soileysel down to our days,) to designate that disease, has 
no well known origin, or precise signification. According to 
JBescherelle, it comes from a Celtic word, gormes , and means sim¬ 
ply pus. It is, indeed, often used with this meaning in human 
medicine, where it has been applied to many diseases of children 
which are accompanied by eruptions of the skin. It is with 
about the same meaning that it has been introduced into our 
medicine. 
With all writers, hippiatric and veterinarians, who took notice 
especially of the most apparent external facts, strangles of the 
horse was a crisis characterized by an abundant suppuration. 
With variations of details upon the interpretation of the phe¬ 
nomena, such was the opinion generally accepted by Cha- 
bert, Fromage, Brugnon and others. This name was in fact in 
accord with their idea of the disease. It had in fact the advan¬ 
tage, by its general signification, of not compromising the yet 
unknown nature of the disease. 
Some fifty years ago, under the tuition of the so-called physi¬ 
ological doctrine, attempts were made to repudiate the name. 
Vatel, Ilodet, D’Arboval and a few others considered strangles as 
a simple inflammation, a rhino-gohryngo-laryngitis, different from 
the ordinary angina by its extending to the lymphatic ganglions, 
to the lungs and even to the stomach. This was one of those tin 
avoidable errors commonly made in natural science, when minds 
dominated by an absolute idea, try to form every fact upon it. 
This opinion, however, was soon put aside, or better, was never 
entirely adopted. It was too much at variance with the facts. 
The property that gourrne possesses of transmitting itself to sub¬ 
jects previously free from its manifestations, always prevented it 
from being considered a simple catarrh of the respiratory muco¬ 
sae. It is true, that, to maintain their theory, the authors already 
named, and Delafond after them, refused to recognize its conta¬ 
gious quality. But such a large number of observations affirmed 
this purely doctrinal mode of appreciation, that soon older ideas 
were again admitted. Thus was the word gourrne taken up again 
and preserved to our days to designate the disease in question. 
The day will come, though, when it will be abandoned. Per- 
