EXTRACTS. FROM FOREIGN JOURNALS. 
211 
This paper will give me the opportunity to present to M. Pasteur 
—taking the point of view of clinic—some of the difficulties of the com¬ 
plex problem, the experimental solution of which he proposed to settle. 
From the end of the last century, direct observation had already 
established the fact that, under the diversity of the symptomatic forms 
that the disease may assume in the different species, and in each one 
individually, according to the organisms which it may attack, anthrax 
constituted a morbid state, always identical by itself, and that, conse¬ 
quently, under its name a certain number of diseases, apparently distinct, 
ought to be classified, though, in the nosography established by old 
practitioners they had received very different denominations, exclusively 
based upon the differences of symptoms under which the unity of the 
essential disease had not been recognized. As many pre-eminent symp¬ 
toms by which anthrax may exhibit itself, even upon individual sub¬ 
jects, as many names were given, so as to imply the existence of as 
many distinct diseases. 
To Chabert, the second Director of the Alfort School, is due the 
merit to have detected the character of family which existed between 
them all, through the diversity of their external appearances ; and to 
have observed that, in fact, the glossanthrax , to?igue-evil , black quarter , 
black leg , splenic apoplexy , constituted but one disease, one in all, which 
could give rise to various symptoms according to the region where local 
lesions would manifest themselves. Indeed, one may understand that when 
the carbuncular congestion takes place in the pharynx, and is exhibited 
by symptoms of strangulation, which brought to that form of malady a 
special name, its characters would differ much from those it would pre¬ 
sent when the diseased group would be located inside of the thigh or in 
front of the chest. 
For Chabert, and many after him following its teachings, the unity 
of anthrax, in all the species and in all individuals, under the diversity 
of its forms, was the result of the constant and common existence of a 
certain number of symptoms and anatQmical lesions. 
The suddenness of its apparition, its rapid march, its almost inevit¬ 
able fatal termination, these are the first common characteristics of all 
carbuncular affections—characteristics which may be unheeded when 
anthrax is only sporadic, but which become .very significant when it is 
enzootic in localities where telluric conditions exist. In these cases, the 
repetition and the rapidity of its attacks are characters by which it is 
easily recognized under whatever form it may present itself. 
There are species, as the ovine, which offers so little resisting 
