PURIFICATION OF LYMPH. 125 



— some of the new-comers exhibited proofs of infection : twenty of 

 them had got the pox, some confluent, some benignant. Those of the 

 sixty-eight who had not caught the disease Lebel inoculated from the 

 others. 



" This fact cstabhshes the conservative as well as the infective 

 properties of the virus. And, further, the matter Lebel used on the 

 occasion is the same as has served him /or upivards often years. Nor 

 has he, since November 1840, had any natural poxvirus : and such 

 is the difficulty, not to say impossibility, to collect matter from natural 

 pustules [.?] that Lebel has not troubled himself about it, but has 

 contented himself with what he had in possession. 



" M. Lebel does not, however, deny that the disease, through so 

 many transmissions, undergoes some mitigation, seeing that lambs 

 which he is inoculating year by year with virus which he has by 

 him, experience hardly any derangement of health while the disease 

 is on them, and that it is rare for him to lose more than one in a 

 hundred *." 



These observations appear to us conclusive, and to 

 fully prove that not only is a purer lymph obtained by 

 the primitive virus being passed through the systems 

 of a number of healthy sheep, but that no loss of its 

 specific properties thereby results. 



Its purification by ovinating other animals, as the 

 ox tribe, and then bringing it back to the sheep, has 

 also been attempted, but whether successfully or not, 

 is doubtful, for the statements essentially differ. We 

 do not intend in this place to discuss the question, for 

 in a subsequent chapter we shall give the particulars 

 of some experiments which were undertaken to ascer- 

 tain whether ovine-pox could be conveyed by inocula- 

 tion to other animals. 



Various expedients have been adopted to preserve 

 the lymph so that it might be depended on for future 



* Veterinarian, vol. xxi, p. 35. 



