370 PROTECTIVE INOCULATIONS. 



the end of twenty days his blood serum exhibited an agglutinating 

 power forty times greater than that of normal blood. In practice it 

 has been found advisable to repeat the inoculation at the end of a 

 week. Wright reports that among 11,295 British soldiers inoculated 

 in India, the percentage of those who subsequently contracted typhoid 

 fever was 0.95, while 2.5 per cent of those not inoculated suffered an 

 attack of this disease. According to Foulerton the soldiers in South 

 Africa, during the Boer war, who have been inoculated have contracted 

 typhoid fever in the proportion of six per thousand, while those not 

 inoculated have suffered to the extent of nine per thousand. How 

 much value should be attached to these statistics it is difficult to say, 

 on account of the numerous factors which are likely to influence the 

 result. Thus a command on the march in a sparsely inhabited coun- 

 try would be much less liable to suffer from typhoid fever than another 

 located in a town and remaining for a considerable time on the same 

 camping ground. In a recent report (February, 1901) Professor 

 Wright states that of 539 officers, men, and women connected with the 

 Fifteenth Hussars at Meerut, India, 360 received protective inocula- 

 tion in England against typhoid fever and 179 did not. Of the former 

 2 (0.55 per cent) were admitted to the hospital, suffering from typhoid 

 fever, with 1 death (0.27 per cent) ; while of the latter 11 (6. 14 per cent 

 were attacked by the fever, with 6 deaths (3.35 per cent). 



It is evident that, while the results reported are encouraging, this 

 method should not be relied upon as a substitute for those sanitary 

 measures which must be our main reliance for the prevention of epi- 

 demics of this disease, viz., sterilization of drinking-water, disinfec- 

 tion of excreta, sanitary police of camps, etc. 



