Abstract
Extract The knowledge that fungi could cause disease in man and animals developed rapidly during the mid-nineteenth century, particularly after the studies of David Gruby in Paris on favus and thrush. However, with the increasing importance of bacteriology and later of virology, the study of mycopathology became eclipsed and it is only in the last few years that interest has again arisen in fungi as the causal agents of systemic disease in animals and man. Even today, it is clear that there is a great need for more detailed work on fungal disease in animals, especially animals in the wild, for these creatures are exposed to the same sites of saprophytic fungal activity in soil and vegetation that are known to play such an important role in the epidemiology of human mycoses.