256 FIRESIDE SCIENCE. 



probable that the same difference prevails among 

 animals. Indeed, we have instances of some herds 

 attacked by the new disease, in which five, ten, 

 and even twenty per cent, of the animals re- 

 main in perfect health. They are confined in the 

 same stalls with those diseased, and breathe the 

 poisoned air night and day, and yet not a function 

 is disturbed or a vital movement interfered with. 

 Among human beyigs, we know that a physician, 

 nurse, or any person leaving a room in which there 

 is a patient sick with scarlet fever or measles, may, 

 in passing a child upon the opposite side of the 

 way, communicate to it the disease ; while during 

 the same walk another may be taken in the arms 

 and suffer no detriment. There is a small class 

 of persons who can never be brought under the 

 influence of kine-pox virus, and such are usually 

 greatly distressed in consequence of this idiosyn- 

 crasy of organization. There is but little occasion 

 for anxiety, however, for such will usually escape 

 the more severe disease of small-pox, if exposed to 

 infection. In our view, those who are most read- 

 ily and severely influenced by vaccine virus are 

 the persons who will be most likely to contract 

 varioloid, when brought in contact with the germs 

 of small-pox ; so that the feeling of safety cher- 

 ished by such is not well founded. There are 

 individuals and families in every community who 



