PROTECTIVE INOCULATIONS. 



In a paper published in the Fortschritte der Medicin, Wysokowicz 

 gives a resume of the results obtained in Russia in protective inocula- 

 tions made up to date of publication (January, 1889). According to 

 the author named, Professor Cenkowski, who had made himself 

 familiar with Pasteur's method while on a visit to Paris, was the first 

 to employ it in Russia (1883). But he found its application to be 

 attended with some difficulties. The cultures attenuated as directed 

 by Pasteur at 42 to 43 C. "showed a very different degree of viru- 

 lence in different experiments, and their virulence was also changed 

 by keeping." Experiments were therefore made with a view to secur- 

 ing a more satisfactory vaccine. In an experiment made in 1885, 

 1,333 sheep were inoculated; of these 21 died from the first inocula- 

 tion and 4 from the second (1.86 per cent). Subsequently better 

 results were obtained, and up to the end of 1888, 20,310 sheep had 

 been inoculated, with an average mortality of 0.87 per cent as a re- 

 sult of the inoculations. 



Professor Cenkowski found that greater losses occurred when the 

 inoculations were made in midsummer or midwinter than when they 

 were made in the spring or autumn. The losses from anthrax dimin- 

 ished among the flocks in which the protective inoculations were prac- 

 tised in proportion to the number of sheep inoculated, falling from 

 8.3 per cent in 1884, the year before the inoculations were com- 

 menced, to 0.13 per cent in 1888. The author of the paper states 

 that in some parts of Russia the annual loss among the sheep from 

 anthrax is as high as 33 per cent. 



The reliability of the protective inoculations was tested by a com- 

 mission, to which Wysokowicz belonged. Fifty sheep which had been 

 inoculated from two to four months previously were infected with viru- 

 lent anthrax material. Of these only one died. Later, twenty sheep 

 which had been inoculated thirteen months before were inoculated with 

 virulent material. Of these two died. These favorable results are 

 ascribed by Wysokowicz to the improved method of attenuating 

 anthrax virus adopted by Professor Cenkowski. As a first vaccine 

 he employed a culture which was stronger than that of Pasteur, and 

 which killed mice and caused the death of one-third of the Ziesel- 

 mause (Spermophilus citillus) inoculated. He used as a vaccine an 

 attenuated culture which had been carried through a series of the 

 animals last mentioned. His vaccine, consisting of a bouillon cul- 

 ture from a drop of blood of the animal, was preserved by the addi- 

 tion of two parts of a thirty -per-cent solution of pure glycerin to 

 one part of the culture. 



For inoculating a sheep of average size he used 0.1 to 0.2 cubic 



