1S6 ON IXOCULATION AS A ISfEAXS FOR THE 



of prevalence, and is in no way mitigated by the influences exerted 

 to suppress it 



We are likewise helped to valuable information from other 

 countries. In Holland, tindincr that in the absence of le^al 

 means, yet with rewards to farmers and veterinarians, and 

 recommendations to owners to practice inoculation, the disease 

 still prevailed and committed great havoc, the Government insti- 

 tuted official inspection in order to find out the cases, carry out 

 segregation and inoculation gTatiutously, as well as provide com- 

 pensation for animals dying from imtoward results. By these 

 means a considerable diminution of the scourge has taken place, 

 believed, of course, to be entirely due to the separation of the 

 diseased from the healthy rather than to any prophylactic pro- 

 perties of inoculation, which, by the way, was only very partially 

 carried out, as the farmers had imbibed the idea that it spread 

 the disease. 



i'rom Australia we learn that in order to bolster up the falling 

 fabric of inoculation :— " Circulars were distributed among the 

 stock-owners of the Colony, asking for their indi\ddual opinions 

 for or against the efficacy of inoculation, as a preventive of 

 pleuro-pneumonia. To these 11-45 circulars there would appear 

 to have been obtained 804 replies, from all parts, from Albany 

 to Young. Of the 804, there are just 310 who may be allowed 

 to speak from actual experience in favour of the inspector's 

 views. There were 3-41 who returned no answer, 183 who 

 thought neither one way nor other, 81 against the practice, and 

 452 who, having no inocidating experience, only offered an 

 opinion second-hand. Xow, surely this is not the unanimity of 

 opinion that the public have been led to understand existed in 

 the minds of stock-holders on the subject ? Fiirthermore, no 

 detads are given of the opportunities or capacity for judging of 

 those who have offered positive belief in the matter. "We know 

 not whether they owned one cow or 1000 oxen; whether they 

 were* familiar with experimental methods of testing scientific 

 theory; what pains were taken to eliminate sources of fallacy; 

 or whether their trials are made by rule of thumb only. We 

 have had ample experience of how easdy men are misled into 

 errors and blunders through following their own preconceived 

 notions on such occasions. Our own pleuro-pneumonia commis- 

 sioners afford us an excellent warning upon that point. They 

 were to a man all non-contagionists, from Ealph to Rowe and 

 ^I"Coy, and they fetched healthy cows from Tasmania, where 

 pleuro had never been, placed them in stalls beside diseased 

 animals, got there in abimdance, inocidated them in various 

 crucial ways, and then declared their inability to communicate 

 the fever by contagion, reported the result to the Legislature, and 

 based upon their feilure an advice deprecating any further legis- 



