62 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



ill Nos. 10, 21, and 23, which were very markedly subject to sexual excite- 

 ment. 



0. It cannot be determined with complete certainty whether the pre- 

 mature ])artuiition of a cow near her time, (No. 10,) as well as the con- 

 secutive phenomena observed in the mother and the calf, are to be attrib- 

 uted to the inoculation ; it is the same with the cow No. 14, which calved 

 before her time. These circumstances are, however, of a nature to dis- 

 courage the inoculation of females in an advanced stage of gestation. 



10. As abortion is frequent in the course of pleuropneumonia, it can- 

 not be passed over in silence that this complication has never appeared 

 with the beasts that have suffered so seriously from the inoculation as 

 to sink under it. If, therefore, the operation has any influence upon ges- 

 tation, it can only be in the last stage. 



11. The hypothesis, already proposed in our first report, that the evo- 

 lution of pleuropneumonia after the inoculation ought to be attributed 

 to the existence of the germ of the disease before the operation, notwith- 

 standing the absence of every morbid phenomenon, acquires a higher 

 degree of probability from our experiments. 



12. The opinion of those who hold that cattle that have had pleuro- 

 pneumonia, and have recovered, do not contract it a second time, or at 

 least rarely, and that the inoculation is performed without success upon 

 these individuals, is again coniii-med by No. 16, which was inoculated 

 twice, but in vain. 



13. Our experiments furnish the remarkable proof that a power, at 

 least temporary, of securing against the contagion of pleiu-o-pneumouia 

 cannot be denied to the inoculation; it remains imcertain, however, to 

 what extent the predisposition to contract this disease is destroyed, either 

 entirely or for a limited time. Much time will be necessary, from the 

 very nature of the question, before a positive solution of it can be arrived 

 at. 



Yerheyen, as president reporter of the Belgian commission, issued a 

 report dated Brussels, February G, 1853. It opened in the following 

 terms : 



In a first report, enibraciiig- the period from the 24th of May to the 15th of July, 1852, 

 it is stated that the comuiissiou had iuocuhited, either by the operations of its members 

 or under its supervision, 189 l)easts of the bovine race of all ages and both s(>xes. Eight 

 herds, numbering 129 head, inhal)ited stables in which i)neumouia had lately ragi'd, or 

 ■was still raging at the time of the inoculation; eight other herds, composed of sixty 

 beasts, abode in healthy localities, or such as were considered healthy, forasmuch as 

 they had never been visited by the disease, or that the scourge had spared them at 

 least for the last eighteen months. 



We made it appear — 



1. Tliat the operation had been followed by effects upon all the cattle inoculated. 



2. That the matter had remained inert upon two cows that we knew to have escaped 

 from exudative plcnro-pneumonia. 



;3. Tliat five cows had perislied from the consequences of inoculation. 

 4. That two had lost the whole of their tails. 

 ^ .'). That six had partially lost them. 



