290 SUMMARY OF EVIDENCE ON PLEURO-PNEUMONIA. 



had in its lung an encysted or encapsuled pleuro-pneiimonia 

 lesion of old standing, and it frequently happens that an animal 

 so affected may be fat and apparently in excellent health. 



This encysted form of pleuro-pneumonia is found in animals 

 that have had the disease, and have apparently recovered, and 

 as there is nothing about them to cause suspicion they are 

 regarded as healthy, and passed as such, even by skilled 

 veterinary surgeons. 



6. The method of combating the disease by means of inocula- 

 tion was brought prominently before the Committee by some of 

 the witnesses examined. It has its eager advocates and also its 

 opponents, and as it is the only kind of treatment that has been 

 employed with any success as a palliative or preventive, if not a 

 cure, of the disease, the Committee endeavoured to make a 

 searching inqv^iry into the method and the results of the opera- 

 tion. This part of the inquiry is pretty fully treated in the 

 evidence given above. 



Of the hundred veterinary surgeons who were asked to express 

 an opinion about it only thirty-five had either practised it or 

 been witnesses of it, and had thereby the means of forming an 

 opinion regarding its effects. Four of these are unable to say 

 whether it has a protective influence or not ; three are of 

 opinion that it has no such influence ; and twenty-eight aSirm, 

 in language more or less emphatic, that inoculation, when per- 

 formed upon healthy animals, has the effect of protecting them 

 agaiust attacks from the disease. Six veterinary surgeons, who 

 confess that they have no experience of the operation, hold the 

 opinion that it has no protective influence whatever ; and three 

 believe that it has. The others reply that they have no 

 experience of the operation, and do not venture to express any 

 opinion regarding it. Some of those who admit the protec- 

 tive influence of inoculation are particular to explain that it has 

 no curative influence, but that it prevents animals from taking 

 the disease, if at the time of inoculation they were untainted. 



7, 8. No cases are recorded in which an animal, after having 

 been successfully inoculated, contracted the disease ; but several 

 cases are recorded in which animals, after having been success- 

 fully inoculated, resisted the infection while standing in the 

 midst of diseased animals. 



9. Some cases are recorded of animals that had been 

 inoculated, and which had within two months exhibited symp- 

 toms of the disease, but upon jpost-inovtein examination it was 

 found that the disease had been contracted by them prior to the 

 date of their inoculation. It is frequently asserted that an 

 animal may be successfully inoculated although it is suffering 

 from an old pleuro-pneumonia lesion. 



10. As regards the fifty-six days' rule the veterinary inspectors 



