152 FACT AGAINST FICTION. 



the requisite personal attention which the experi- 

 ment clemanded ; and this, with a want of attention 

 on the part of those employed to minute details, 

 caused some apparent failures, and induced a belief 

 among' many that the operation was unavailing — 

 a belief which arose from many circumstances 

 combined: the two chief of which were, first, a 

 want of success in the operation itself through want 

 of skill in the operator, or inattention to the purity 

 of the lymph used ; secondly, the neglect of a point 

 arrived at by me, namely, that if the seeds of an out- 

 break of distemper were constitutionally or system- 

 atically scaled in the internal organs of the young 

 hound, vaccination, however carefully performed, 

 would refuse to exist at one and the same time 

 with the distemper') the poison of that disease and 

 the power of the remedy being directly, if brought 

 togetlier, antagonistic, so much so, as totally to 

 prevent the frame, at the same time, from acknow- 

 ledging both the one and the other. If a young 

 hound has taken tlie cow-pox, he will not take the 

 distemper; or if hereafter by contact he suffered 

 slightly from tlie distemjDcr, it would be in so mild 

 a form that no danger whatever would arise to his 

 existence. The few attempts that were made at 



