VETERINARY PROBLEMS. 23 



would appear that these questions have the greatest practical 

 as well as scientific importance, and they deserve solution 

 and must be solved in the immediate future. 



We have here a new method of inoculation, which in 

 many respects is free from the objections urged against the 

 methods developed by European scientists ; but it is still in 

 the experimental stage. We do claim, however, that it is an 

 important step in advance, and in spite of those who sneer 

 at American investigations, we venture to predict that it will 

 be of as much service to us in the future as some of the 

 widely heralded discoveries of which the French and German 

 laboratories have lately been so prolific. 



Such studies, however, lead us to inquire if there is not 

 something beyond vaccination or inoculation which would 

 be far more satisfactory. A few years ago we could only 

 cultivate disease germs in the animal body, — to-day we cul- 

 tivate them more rapidly in the flasks of our laboratory. 

 To-day we must introduce the living germs of contagious 

 fevers into the animal, and allow them to confer the immu- 

 nity in their own mysterious way. In the future we hope to 

 force this secret from them, and to accomplish it in our own 

 way and without their assistance. With this in view, we are 

 now directing our experiments in such a manner as to learn, 

 if possible, what is the nature of immunity, and how it is 

 produced. The question is a difficult one, and has seemed 

 almost beyond our grasp, but in one way and another we are 

 getting nearer to it, and eventually we shall master it. We 

 shall then be able to fortify against these microscopic ene- 

 mies by a few doses of some chemical substance, as we now 

 give other medicines, and thus the inconveniences, the dan- 

 ger, of introducing living germs into the body will be over- 

 come. 



If we should be somewhat disappointed in these anticipa- 

 tions, the great fiict remains that the contagious fevers are 

 produced by living germs which cannot originate spontane- 

 ously ; that these are tangible ; that they can be cultivated 

 indefinitely outside of the body and studied, and that with- 

 out such germs these destructive plagues cannot be pro- 

 duced. Hence the first indication for prevention is to destroy 

 the germs wherever they exist, as you destroy weeds in your 



