322 THE DISEASES AND DISORDERS OF THE OX. 



has also been averred that ovination of the subject is equal to 

 vaccination as a prophylactic against sraall-pox. This, however, 

 is very doubtful indeed. It appears that ovine variola cannot be 

 transmitted by inoculation either to the cow or probably to 

 man. The inflammation which has come on in the punctures 

 of children has declined in a few days without being attended 

 with any specific effects. Many children have been ovinated 

 several times in succession, but without any successful result. 

 The same children have afterwards been vaccinated, and at the 

 usual time the vaccine disease has been developed and passed 

 regularly through its course ; while simultaneously the same 

 kind of ovine virus has been inoculated on sheep, and the small- 

 pox has been produced. Attempts to communicate variola ovina 

 by inoculation to horses, oxen, goats, deer, pigs, dogs, monkeys, 

 rabbits, and various birds are also said to have been unsuccessful. 



Varicella has been said to occur in sheep ; but the disease so 

 spoken of has probably not as yet been sufficiently examined. 



If sheep-pox should perchance break out again in England, 

 the best course would probably be to slaughter all animals that 

 were afflicted or had been in close contiguity with animals 

 which were known to be afflicted. With regard to the practice 

 of ovination, whereby the disease is imparted in a mild form to 

 sheep liable to be attacked, the subject is one which does not 

 really affect the sheep-farmer in England, and as it is an 

 extensive one, we refrain from entering upon the consideration 

 of it more fully. 



DIPHTHEKIA. 

 We wish to insert here the briefest possible allusion to a 

 question we have often and often had occasion to discuss in the 

 columns of Tlte Yorkshire Weekly Post, and elsewhere, namely, 

 to the relationship subsisting between certain diseases of man- 

 kind on the one hand and those of animals on the other. 

 Every day this question is receiving more and more attention, 

 and the communicability of some diseases of lower animals to 

 man himself is established beyond all doubt. We find that The 

 Times (a journal which is always well up to the foremost scien- 

 tific work), in its issue of Thursday, August 4th, 1887, gives 

 an account of Dr. George Turner's recent report on diphtheria. 

 This observer has had experience of that disease considered 



