se became
contagious, as well as epidemic; that is, that one person might receive it
from another, as well as by the general unsalutary influence of the
atmosphere. This is difficult to comprehend, but may be conceived by
considering the increase of contagious matter in the small-pox. In that
disease one particle of contagious matter stimulates the skin of the arm in
inoculation into morbid action so as to produce a thousand particles
similar to itself; the same thing occurs in catarrh, a few deleterious
atoms stimulate the mucous membrane of the nostrils into morbid actions,
which produce a thousand other particles similar to themselves. These
contagious particles diffused in the air must have consisted of animal
matter, otherwise how could an animal body by being stimulated by them
produce similar particles? Could they then have had a volcanic origin, or
must they not rather have been blown from putrid marshes full of animal
matter? But the greatest part of the solid earth has been made from animal
and vegetable recrements, which may be dispersed by volcanos.--Future
discoveries must answer these questions.

As the sensitive fever attending these epidemic catarrhs is seldom either
much irritated or inirritated, venesection is not always either clearly
indicated or forbid; but as those who have died of these catarrhs have
generally had inflamed livers, with consequent suppuration in them,
venesection is adviseable, wherever the cough and fever are greater than
common, so as to render the use of the lancet in the least dubious. And in
some cases a second bleeding was necessary, and a mild cathartic or two
with four grains of calomel; with mucilaginous subacid diluents; and warm
steam occasionally to alleviate the cough, finished the cure.

The catarrhus contagiosus is a frequent disease amongst horses and dogs; it
seems first to be disseminated amongst these animals by miasmata diffused
in the atmosphere, because so many of them receive it at the same time; and
afterwards to be communicable from one horse or dog to another by
contagion, as above described. These epidemic or contagious catarrhs more
frequently occur amongst dogs and horses than amongst men; which is
probably owing to the greater extension and sensibility of the mucous
membrane, which covers the organ of smell, and is diffused over their wide
nostrils, and their large maxillary and frontal cavities. And to this
circumstance may be ascribed the greater fat