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The object of this inquiry is to collect evidence from those who are best able to afford it, bearing on the natural history of acute pneumonia as observed in this country; and especially its etiology. Upon this latter question opinion is much divided, and while in other countries valuable material has been collected respecting it, little has been done in our own. It is now desired that an impartial investigation should be made upon the disease, in the hope that information of great value may be elicited. Such an investigation might reasonably be expected to be of service in the promotion of particular measures of prophylaxis, and probably also in the establishment of a rational therapeutics is this disease.
At the present day, two views are commonly held, concerning the etiology of an attack of primary acute lobar pneumonia in a previously healthy individual. They may be concisely summed up