446 Chapter XIV 



1 



observers, amongst whom I may specially cite Chauveau^, Rossignol 

 and Cienkowski, got together a certain number of data bearing on 

 this question. These data showed distinctly that, in certain cases, 

 the lambs born from vaccinated sheep presented, from birth, an un- 

 doubted resistance to the anthrax bacillus. This fact, however, was 

 neither constant enough nor sufficiently marked to enable us to count 

 upon the young animals being in a refractory condition, and thus 

 avoid having to submit them to vaccination by the two Pasteur 

 vaccines. This necessity threw into the background the researches 

 on the hereditary transmission of acquired immunity. It was only 

 much later that this question was again taken up on a purely 

 theoretical basis. Ehrlich^, to whom science is indebted for so many 

 works of the highest importance upon immunity, again took the 

 initiative in exact and minute researches upon the heredity of 

 immunity, acquired as the result of vaccination against toxins. In 

 this relation he studied the immunity of the descendants of animals 

 immunised against phanerogamic toxins, such as ricin, abrin and 

 robin, and later, in collaboration with Hubener^, that of the offspring 

 of animals vaccinated against tetanus toxin. Ehrlich proved very 

 clearly that the antitoxic immunity acquired by the father is never 

 [46S] transmitted to his progeny. This fact alone is quite sufficient 

 to show that it is not a true immunity that is met with in young 

 animals born of mothers who have acquired a refractory condition ; 

 true immunity is transmitted by the sexual elements, the sper- 

 matozoon and the ovum. Certain observers, Tizzoni* and his 

 collaborators Cattani and Centanni, thought they could overthrow 

 the rule established by Ehrlich. They believed that the male rabbit, 

 vaccinated against rabies, was capable of transmitting its immunity 

 to its progeny. Charrin and Gley^ expressed the same opinion as 

 regards animals of the male sex vaccinated against experimental 

 pyocyanic disease. But the very precise experiments of Wernicke^, 



1 Ann. de VInst. Pasteur^ Paris, 1888, t. ii, p. 69. 



2 Ztschr. f. Hyg., Leipzig, 1892, Bd. xii, S. 183; Brieger u. Ehrlich, Deutsche 

 med. Wchnschr., 1892, S. 393. 



3 Ztschr.f. Hyg., Leipzig, 1894, Bd. xviii, S. 57. 



* Centralbl. f. Bakteriol. u. Parasitenk., Jena, 1893, Bd. xiii, S. 81 ; Deutsche 

 med. Wchnschr., Leipzig, 1892, S. 394. 



^ Compt. rend. Acad. d. sc, Paris, 1893, t cxvii, p. 365 ; Eev. gen. d. sc. pures et 

 appliq., Paris, 1896, p. 1. 



6 Festschr. z, lOO-jahr. Stiftungsf. d. med. chir. Friedr. Wilhelms-Instituts, 

 Berlin, 1895. 



