76 CANINE DISTEMPER 
able showing of the vaccine may lead to serious results, 
and is unfair to the organism. It was years before 
typhoid vaccine made a proper showing, and yet the 
typhoid bacillus was still considered the cause of typhoid 
fever.” 
When using the vaccine for therapeutic purposes, it 
must be remembered that by the time the case is first 
brought to the attention of the veterinary surgeon 
the condition is that of an acute general infection, 
complicated with severe secondary infections, in which 
case vaccines would have very little chance of pro- 
ducing beneficial results. In order to overcome this 
situation, an anti-distemper serum has been prepared, 
which offers more hope than vaccines for these acute 
conditions, and which bids fair entirely to replace them 
in the future as a curative agent. A serum for prophy- 
lactic purposes is of little value unless used simultane- 
ously with the vaccine. Serum may safely be given in 
any stage of the disease, the dose being 5 c.c. in mild 
cases, administered daily, and in severe cases the same 
amount twice daily. 
In general practice it would appear to be a decidedly 
safer procedure always to use an antiserum in conjunc- 
tion with a vaccine, particularly should the latter be pre- 
pared from living cultures. Similarly, while appreciating 
the greater possibility of obtaining a high degree of 
immunity with a living culture, for safety’s sake, I deem 
the employment of a dead culture to be far preferable, 
since all risk of creating an outbreak of the disease is 
thereby eliminated. On the other hand, the immunity 
resulting from the inoculation of a dead culture is chiefly 
directed against the vital activity of the organisms—ie., 
anti-bacterial rather than anti-toxic. 
Cultures when dead produce, of course, less effect than 
when living, and this method may be conveniently used 
