68 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



there I met veterinarians from all parts of I'^urope wlio had steadily- per- 

 severed in the practice of inoculation and could furnish me with relial)le 

 data. It is impossible, and indeed it would be superfluous, to give a very 

 dctailed account of the thousands and tens of thousands of cases which 

 have led to the almost universal opinion that inoculation is the best 

 means in the majority of instances to check the ravages of pleuro-pneu- 

 monia. The observations have been made in all parts where pleuro- 

 pneumonia has appeared, though opposition to the practice is scarcely 

 overcome to the extent that is desirable. 



The efforts of Professor Verheyen in Belgium and his many attacks 

 ou Dr. Willems's nu^thod, approx cd as they have been by S(mie in that 

 country, only illustrate once more the adage that a man is not a prophet 

 in his own country. But Professor Thiervene, who was one of the original 

 Belgian commissioners, and at first among the decided skeptics, delivered 

 an address before the Eoyal Academy of Medicine in Brussels in 18GG, in 

 reply to one by M. Boens, who had attacked the practice of inoculation, 

 in which he vindicates Dr. Willems's position. He indorses Professor 

 Saint Cyr's remarks on the demonstration of a preservative influence by 

 the most accurate and extensive experiments, and shows that of the well- 

 informed in Belgium, who are acquainted with the characters of the con- 

 tagious pleuro-pueumonia, none now doubt that inoculation is a safe and 

 certain preserva tive. 



Medical men, no less than veterinarians, have a duty to perform in 

 relation to this subject. Boards of health in cities and country districts 

 should take up the subject in connection with the sale of the meat and milk 

 of animals affected with pleuro-pneumonia. History shows that in those 

 countries, such as England, where the sale of the produce of these animals 

 has been most unrestricted, the traffic in such cattle has been so great as 

 to cause the nu)st severe losses by the disease, and without intermission. 



An objection to inoculation, which weighs in the case of human and 

 ovine small-pox, as well as rinderpest, is that the inoculated disease is 

 contagious, that the cohabitation of healthy with inoculated animals may 

 lead to extensions of the disorderly infection, and that the foci whence 

 the disease spreads are always on the increase. Such objections cannot 

 weigh against the inoculation for the lung plague, as the inoculated nud- 

 ady is not communicated except by reinoculation. My observations on 

 this point are very numerous, and I do not know of a single instance 

 recorded, during the seventeen years that inoculation has been exten- 

 sively practiced, in which contagion from inoculated animals has been 



witnessed. 



Another objection which has led, of late years, to the practice being 

 checked among the cow-feeders of Brooklyn, is the sloughing of'the tad 

 and the animals splashing blood and matter from their sore tails into the 

 ndlk-cans. All this aiises from the oi)eration being performed by per- 

 sons who know nothing of the precautions to be used, and especially of 

 the proper selection and preservation of the virus. Accidents will hap- 

 pen; but out of nearly two thousand inoculations 1 have had a loss of less 



