530 Diseases of the Genital Organs 



of breeding. It is not disclosed whether it took on an aver- 

 age one, two, or three years for one of the aborters to pro- 

 duce a calf. 



The unreliable character of Bland's experiments is further 

 indicated by the fact that, while the announced plan was to 

 vaccinate only non-pregnant animals, he actually did not 

 know whether they were pregnant or not. As a conse- 

 quence a number of pregnant heifers and cows were inocu- 

 lated. Although B. abortus was looked upon as the cause of 

 abortion and would quite certainly cause abortion if injected 

 during pregnancy for that purpose, the animals erroneously 

 inoculated to prevent abortion were benefited the same as 

 the non-pregnant animals. 



In such experiments dairymen sooner or later become 

 good practical judges of results. Before the 1914-1916 re- 

 searches began, most of the dairymen owning the herds of 

 the 1911-1913 experiments had dropped the work; before 

 the close of 1916 a majority of the animals in the second set 

 of experiments had been withdrawn. 



In defiance of these and all other recorded data, several 

 American firms make and sell what they represent as abor- 

 tion vaccines consisting of living B. abortus cultures. Bac- 

 teriologists to whom I submitted samples purchased in the 

 open market failed by cultural method to find living abortion 

 bacteria in any sample. There is probably no alleged thera- 

 peutic substance upon the market, biologic or proprietary, 

 which is advertised in a more misleading and unjustified 

 manner. There is absolutely no justification, so far as I 

 can find recorded, for the claim that abortion can be econo- 

 mically decreased by their use. The data of Bland appear 

 on the surface to decrease the abortion, but the abortion rate 

 is largely a matter of vision. The number of calves was not 

 materially increased in the Bland experiments, since the 

 abortions were statistically lowered by the higher rate of 

 sterility. 



I believe abortion vaccines (if they really contain living 

 abortion bacilli) the most dangerous and vicious biologic 

 product thus far offered to veterinarians and stockmen. It 



