PREVENTIVE INOCULATION 69 
which he and several other workers are positive is the 
specific causal organism. With several strains of this 
microbe, a vaccine was made and experiments carried 
out to test its immunising properties on a large number 
of dogs, and in a few instances on other animals, such as 
the Canadian lynx, sea lion, fox, etc. Forty dogs were 
used in all, nine being immunised with live cultures 
and seventeen with dead cultures, while fourteen were 
saved as controls. All of these dogs were exposed to at 
least three animals suffering with typical symptoms of 
distemper, including the respiratory, abdominal, and 
nervous types. 
Eight of the controls died, while all the immunised 
dogs remained well. To substantiate further the position 
given to B. bronchisepticus, Ferry, and also Torrey and 
Rahe (Jour. Med. Res., vol. xxvii., 1913), carried on a 
relatively large number of prophylactic inoculations with 
‘suspensions of the dead organisms, and found in a large 
percentage of cases that a true protection had been 
established in the inoculated dogs, and that the controls 
in practically all cases rapidly succumbed to the ravages 
of the disease. 
Ferry wrote in 1913: ‘From a practical standpoint, we 
have found these protective inoculations of very great 
value, as from the nature of work carried on in our 
laboratory it is necessary to use from fifteen to twenty 
dogs a week for one purpose or another, and it has 
always been our experience to lose nearly all of the young 
ones with distemper.. Since beginning to give some of 
these dogs protecting inoculations as soon as they are 
received from the dog pound our experience is just 
reversed and we are able to save a large number of 
them. This is not only a great help as far as the experi- 
ments are concerned, but a great saving from a monetary 
point of view, and incidentally corroborates our previous 
