142 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
those who have had practical experience of the measure — and in 
this number I include myself ; — for instance, Dr Alice M. Corthorn, 
M.B., London, who with her own hand performed some 32,000 
inoculations in the towns of Dharwar and Gadag, says : * “I think 
that these and the Dharwar figures prove that, so far from its being 
inadvisable to at once inoculate the contacts of a case of plague 
lest they be incubating the disease, it is desirable at once to inocu- 
late all who have been exposed to infection ” 
Again, in a report on plague at Sydney, Australia, Dr Ashburton 
Thompson, the Chief Medical Officer of the Government, and Presi- 
dent of the Board of Health, reports : f “ Among the inoculated 
public, thirteen were attacked, .... all these patients not merely 
recovered, but had conspicuously light attacks. The cases occurred 
almost entirely among the earlier 200, while the virulence of the 
infection was at its highest” (page 12). “It will be noticed that 
attacks which occurred at, or before the lapse of about ten days 
from, inoculation were not aggravated by it” (page 13). It 
may he stated that of the thirteen cases noted by Dr Thompson, 
eleven occurred within periods varying from the actual day of 
inoculation to the seventh day after the operation. Although I 
have not been able to find that the Indian Plague Commission 
considered this actual point, yet they incidentally remark, | when 
considering how soon protection is acquired, that “the case- 
mortality of the first three days compares favourably with that of 
uninoculated patients,” and in another place recommend “the 
encouragement of inoculation among persons left in the houses with 
the sick,”§ thereby certainly implying that there could be no risk 
in such a procedure. 
We may then confidently say that the plague vaccine is harmless 
to those incubating the disease. 
With regard to the first portion of the second of the queries noted 
above, an answer is at once furnished by the table. For it is evident 
* Report on Anti-plague Inoculation Work in the Dharwar District, by 
Alice M. Corthorn, M.B., B.Sc., Medical Officer on Plague Duty, Bombay. 
Government Central Press, 1899. 
t Report on an outbreak of Plague at Sydney, 1900, by the Chief Medical 
Officer of the Government and President of the Board of Health. Sydney, 
William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1900. 
X Report of Indian Hague Commission, vol. v. p. 258. 
§ Ibid., p. 338. 
