804 
Vaccination against Anthrax. 
vaccination. In several of them a considerable swelling formed 
around the point of inoculation, whilst most of the milking cows 
for a few days lost their milk. On this account the owner refused 
to allow the animals to be submitted to the second vaccination. 
As far as can be ascertained, none of the vaccinated animals have 
died from anthrax since the vaccination. 
Farm IV - . — On this farm during the twelve months preceding 
the vaccinations 2 horses and several cattle had died from anthrax. 
In the month of June last 65 cattle and 16 horses were submitted 
to the first and second vaccinations. None of the animals were 
sensibly disturbed by the operation, and no cases of anthrax have 
since occurred among the vaccinated animals. 
It must be admitted that the result of these trials of the Pasteur - 
ian method of vaccinating against anthrax is very unsatisfactory. 
It may be, and no doubt is, true that when thousands of animals are 
vaccinated the percentage of loss from the operation itself is a mere 
fraction per cent. ; but here we have a case in which, in one lot of 
sheep, 7 per cent, of the animals succumbed to the operation in- 
tended to protect them. If this had been the first recorded instance 
of the kind, one might have supposed that the unfortunate results 
were accidents in the strict sense of the woi'd — that is, ascribable to 
some imperfection or mismanagement in the method of carrying out 
the operation. But, unfortunately, it appears that accidents of pre- 
cisely the same kind occur every now and again in France, and that 
no human foresight can prevent them. Thus, in a note to the most 
recently published statistics regarding the anthrax vaccinations in 
France, M. Chamberland admits that accidents of this kind occur 
here and there every year after the vaccinations. He says that while 
ten, fifteen, or twenty veterinary surgeons receive on the same day 
the same vaccin, and carry out the vaccinations without accident, it 
sometimes happens that one of them reports that a few days after the 
vaccinations 5 or even 10 per cent, of the animals have succumbed 
to anthrax. These accidents are all included in the statistics, but 
they are so rare that they hardly influence the final result. They 
are deplored, because they raise a serious prejudice against the system 
of vaccination when they become known, and it is admitted that 
they have always been a great puzzle to those who are responsible 
for the manufacture of the vaccins. Now, however, M. Chamber- 
land thinks that he has discovered an explanation of them, which he 
gives in the following words 1 : — 
“ In the first place, almost all these accidents take place after 
the first vaccination, and that leads us to think that very often the 
animals succumb, not to the inoculation, but to the spontaneous dis- 
ease, which already existed in the animals, and which was just on 
the point of manifesting itself. Sometimes, it is true, animals die 
after the second vaccination, or even after the first, with symptoms 
which seem to indicate that the disease had its starting-point at the 
1 Annates dc L'lnstifut Pasteur , March 1894. 
