S7G Inoculation for Pleuro-Pneumonia in Cattle. 



this or any other country. The father of Dr. Willems, generally, 

 keeps in his sheds about 80 cows and oxen in the summer, and 

 from 100 to 120 during the winter, feeding upon the grains, &c., 

 obtained from the distillery. The animals, as they become fat, 

 are disposed of, and their places quickly filled up by new pur- 

 chases. The stock, therefore, is very often changed, and since 

 1836 he estimates his losses at fully 10 per cent, in each year. 

 The losses of other persons have been quite equal to this on the 

 average, while in numerous cases they have been considerably 

 more. It appears that about two years since (December, 1850), 

 Dr. Willems, having failed to arrest the disease in his father's 

 herd by either hygeinic or medical treatment, had recourse to 

 inoculation, as an experiment upon one or two animals ; but it 

 was not until the following February that he adopted it to 

 any extent. Between this date and the commencement of 1852 

 he inoculated 108 animals belonging to his father, not one of 

 which, it is said, contracted pleuro-pneumonia, although all were 

 exposed to its contagion. Fifty other animals, also the pro- 

 perty of Willems sen., were left M/zinoculated during the same 

 time, and of these, 17 took the disease, and were destroyed. 

 These facts, with some others bearing on the same point, were 

 embodied in a memoir, and presented to the Minister of the 

 Interior by Dr. Willems in March last, and within a few weeks, 

 from the publicity given to the subject, inoculation became 

 pretty general in many parts of Belgium. 



Up to the period of my visit twelve hundred animals had been 

 inoculated in Hasselt, with but ten deaths ; and I was informed 

 that the disease was nearly exterminated for want of subjects to 

 attack, immunity being given by the operation. This number 

 gives but a faint idea of the extent of the practice, as more ani- 

 mals are daily being inoculated in different parts of the kingdom; 

 and Dr. De Saive, I learn, has operated upon no less than 1500 

 in the provinces of Rhenish Prussia. It seems that, upon pub- 

 licity being given to the subject. Dr. De Saive wrote to the 

 Governments of France, Holland, and Prussia, offering to in- 

 oculate the cattle of these several countries upon some improved 

 plan, of which he claimed to be the inventor. Not succeeding 

 immediately in his object, he made arrangements with the local 

 authorities in the different provinces of Rhenish Prussia to carry 

 out the operation. The practice, however, was attended with 

 such ill success, so many animals losing their tails from ulceration 

 and mortification, and others being destroyed by constitutional 

 irritation, that the Government, hearing of these disasters, ordered 

 the inoculations to be forthwith discontinued. No doubt that 

 very many of these untoward results were caused by the serous 

 exudations selected for the inoculations being of bad quality, and by 



