372 THE MEANS OF PREVENTION. 



" The prophylaxis of inoculation, efficient as it may be in an 

 epizootic outbreak, certainly has no claims for adoption in connec- 

 tion with the disease as it now exists, for it would only prove one 

 of the surest methods of spreading the malady, while our aim should 

 be to confine it to its present quarters, and then eradicate it at what- 

 ever cost the method may entail." 



Referring to the subject, Clater says : 



"■ Inoculation has been practiced with questionable success. Ex- 

 periments professing to be for the object of testing the efficacy of 

 direct inoculation for pleuro-pneumonia have been recommended 

 and practiced with great looseness. The peculiarly subtle character 

 of a contagious disease is not sufficiently weighed with care. It is 

 a very general practice to recommend and adopt the remedy after 

 an animal has succumbed to the affliction. We contend, therefore, 

 that inoculation in such cases is no test of efficacy, as with the exist- 

 ence of pleuro-pneumonia upon the farm, no one can arrive at a safe 

 conclusion whether the consequence of the malady has really re- 

 sulted from a direct cause or from the artificial means employed. 



"All the profitable terminations of pleuro-pneumonia have been 

 witnessed in its unmolested march through a herd when inoculated ; 

 hence our disbelief in the sufficiency of the evidence at present be- 

 fore us." 



The results of investigation are so conflicting, indefinite, and at 

 variance with seeming facts, that it is not by any means established 

 that any degree of success has ever been obtained by its use. 



There is not a single instance, so far as we have been able to 

 learn, where it has been resorted to until after the malady had act- 

 ually attacked a herd, when more or less of its number might rea- 

 sonably be supposed to have assumed a risk. 



Now, since all authorities are agreed to the fact that its incuba- 

 tive period ranges all the way from ten to ninety days, we can not 

 see how its application could affect an animal when applied at about 

 the time it should be assuming an acute character, unless we can go 

 a step further and claim for it a curative effect. In the face of the 

 fact that the malady often exhausts itself with attacking but one or 

 two animals out of a herd of many and the rest suffering immunity ; 

 also that the disease often breaks out in the same herd after inocu- 

 lation has been performed, as well as the negative results following 

 its use in England, Belgium, Australia, and other countries where 

 the disease has existed for a long time — we think there is but little 

 doubt, notwithstanding it has a few advocates, that it has thus far 

 proved inert to accomplish the desired result, and that we must 



