INOCULATION AS A PREVENTION OF PLEUEO-PNEUMONIA. 31 



of pleuro-pueumonia, the precautions to be exercised, the mode 

 of performing the operation, with the favourable and unfavour- 

 able results. My statistics show the numbers done, the condi- 

 tions under which they were done, so far as being infected or 

 otherwise is concerned, and the loss attendant thereon ; but as 

 the main facts, which really point to the value of the operation 

 may not be just at once grasped, I will summarise my subject 

 and my experience in the following conclusions : — 



1. Inoculation is based upon the theory of pleuro-pneumonia 



being an eruptive fever. 



2. Inoculation is the application to a healthy animal of the 



virus of pleuro-pneumonia. 



3. Inoculation does not produce pleuro-pneumonia. 



4. An inoculated animal does not infect another animal. 



5. An inoculated animal cannot contract pleuro-pneumonia. 



6. The time occupied by the operation is from four to eight 



weeks. 



7. Inoculation in the case of milk cows does not materially 



interfere with their milking. 



8. Inoculated animals thrive better after the operation, and 



are stronojer and freer from other aliments than those 

 not inoculated. 



9. The loss arising from the operation need not exceed 2 per cent. 



10. From the fact that an inoculated animal is exempt from 



the disease, and that the average time required to develop 

 and mature an inoculation is from fourteen to twenty- 

 one days. That period may be accepted as the time 

 required to arrest an outbreak. 

 In drawing this paper to a close I would thank the Highland 

 and Agricultural Society of Scotland for this opportunity they 

 have afforded me of laying my experience, in a plain manner, 

 before the great mass of stock owners which the society represents. 

 I would ask them to bear in mind that I have penned only plain 

 practical facts, not theories, and that these facts can be verified 

 by close upon a hundred cattle owners in the area of my practice 

 alone, who have had a])undant reason to be thankful for the 

 good the successful employment of inoculation has conferred 

 upon them. For any crudity the paper may contain, I have to 

 offer this apology, it has been put together in the spare minutes 

 only of a busy life, and by one with no pretensions to being a 

 literate. I hope I have shown sufficiently clearly, that in the 

 event of another visitation, the country need no longer depend 

 solely upon the working of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, 

 for that in inoculation for prevention of pleuro-pneumonia wo 

 have a measure which does its work with a minimum of loss 

 and inconvenience to the owner, and with a certainty of so much 

 gain to tlie public, that it ought to be bracketed in the Act (with 

 the slaughtering of the afi'ected) as compulsory. 



