18 INOCULATION AS A PEEVENTION OF PLEUEO-PNEUMONIA. 



3. The cows inoculated at the farm, but which had never till 

 now been exposed to the risk of contagium. 



4. The four freshly bought in cows. 



The result was the disease appeared again, and carried off 

 three out of the four fresh cows which had not been inoculated, 

 all the others remaining in the most perfect health. The history 

 of this outbreak is not by any means the only one of its kind 

 I have had to deal with. I have quoted it from amongst a num- 

 ber ; because to my mind it shows out so strongly the value and 

 the protective power of inoculation, not only in these few remain- 

 ing exempt, that had been exposed all along to the contagium, 

 but in those which had been brought in from the farm, and 

 exposed to the influence of a contagium eight months after they 

 were inoculated, and which, to prove its presence, carried off 

 three out of the four not done. The calves were sent to the farm 

 and were there mixed with some other stock, with no bad result 

 in the way of conveying the disease, and I finally eradicated the 

 disease from the town byres, by systematically inoculating all 

 fresh stock, as bought in, and until such time as I judged the 

 contagium would have died out. 



One may reasonably here ask, Why in the face of such facts 

 has the operation been kept so much in the background ? The 

 reason is not far to seek,, and bears rather heavily on the veteri- 

 nary profession. 



When inoculation was first declared to be a success by Dr. 

 Willems already quoted, various Government commissions, com- 

 posed largely if not entirely of veterinary surgeons, were appointed 

 to investigate the subject and report thereon. Some reported 

 favourably, others did not, and there can be no doubt that their 

 difference of opinion arose from the incompleteness of the experi- 

 ments witnessed, and above all, from faults in the mode of 

 performing the operation. 



In this country I believe I am correct in affirming, that the 

 then heads of the veterinary profession entirely condemned it. 

 Professor John Gamgee did certainly for a time extol the opera- 

 tion, but he did so solely from his having fallen in with the views 

 of some successful exponents of the operation on the Continent. 

 When he began to practise it, his views as a result of his prac- 

 tice entirely changed, and we find him in his Domestic Animals 

 in Health and Disease in the article on Pleuro-pneumonia, say- 

 ing that " the operation w^as one which he had to condemn from 

 experience." He does not say why, but we know it was because 

 his mortality average was as high, and in some one or two 

 instances, worse than from the disease itself. I have made con- 

 siderable inquiry into his work in Edinburgh, and from what 

 I have learned, I am not surprised he had such losses, his 

 mode of performing the operation from beginning to end was 

 a most objectionable one. Had Mr Gamgee exercised more 



