68 BINDERPEST. 



sagacity, not only to avoid inoculation as a method of cure, 

 and to guard the entire dermic structure of subjects exposed 

 to contagion by cleansing and care ; but in some measure, at 

 least, to adapt their treatment, when ill, to the consideration, 

 however conjectural it may seem, that the secernent function 

 of the skin is the most important instrumentality by which 

 the ijoison may be counteracted or eliminated. 



Lest we may seem to speak slightly of the inoculative 

 method, which we cannot recommend as a therapeutic or pre- 

 ventiv^e agent, we will add a brief sketch of the efforts made to 

 test it as an agency of cure. The seeming success which result- 

 ed from inoculation for small-pox in the human subject, led to 

 great hopes of the efficiency of a similar use of the poison of 

 the distempers of the last century. England, which was 

 prompt through Dobson, in 1754, and Dr. Flemynge, in 1755, 

 publicly to approve the method, exhibited the same decision 

 in proclaiming it a failure. The first tabulated series of expe- 

 riments, were made under the direction of the famous Camper, 

 on a small island on the southwest of Zeeland, of which ac- 

 counts are preserved for three years prior to 1773. In 1770, 

 sixty-one animals were inoculated, by threads charged with 

 the virus and passed beneath the skin, of which eighteen 

 recovered and forty-two died ; one not having sickened. Of 

 those treated in the next two years, a fraction of over one- 

 third did not catch the contagion, and the number of deaths 

 reported was three. 



Gamgee, in his review of this subject, deems the experi- 

 ments of 1770 most reliable, as he found in the accounts 

 for the two succeeding years, records* " of long periods of 

 incubation, and constant recovery, quite incompatible with 

 our existing knowledge of the disease." 



The success of Dr. Barrasch, who inoculated twenty-five 

 hundred cattle in Hungary, of which only seventy-five died, 

 and the serious losses of Eussia, amounting, as was esti- 

 mated, to ten millions of roubles annually, led to the appoint- 

 ment of a commission with the view of extirpating the pest 



 These may be regarded as additional evidence that the dlBtemper of that period was not the 

 Binderpest. 



