Vaccination against Anthrax. 
805 
seat of vaccination. The vaccin itself cannot be incriminated, 
since the same sample is sent on the same day to other veterinary 
surgeons, in whose hands it has not produced any ill effect. It 
is probable that the breed of the animals or the mode of feeding 
them may play a certain role ; but that cannot be important, since 
the accidents occur everywhere, in every corner of France. 
“We think, rather, that they ought to be attributed to some acci- 
dental impurities which have been introduced under the skin at the 
same time as the vaccin. In fact, we know to-day, beyond any doubt, 
that two microbes which, when inoculated separately under the skin 
of an animal, do not produce any injurious effect, may when they are 
associated entail a fatal result. But when one reflects on the con- 
ditions in which the inoculations are ordinarily performed — in build- 
ings, on animals having the skin soiled with dirt, with syringes the 
needles of which are bound to be contaminated, one is bound to 
admit that impurities must be frequently inoculated at the same 
time as the vaccin. Hence those purulent oedemas which have been 
reported to us. We think that the presence of foreign microbes 
is the principal cause of the accidents in question. It does not appear 
to us to be possible to avoid them altogether, for in the practice of 
the opei’ation on a large scale one cannot employ the precautions 
which are customary in laboratories. But they may be avoided in 
part by remembering that every impurity introduced under the skin 
at the same time as the vaccin may entail fatal consequences.” 
I have quoted at length M. Chamberland’s explanation of the 
accidents which follow immediately after vaccination, but I can- 
not admit that it is satisfying with regard to the losses which 
followed the operation on Farm II. Fortunately, in that case 
the second vaccinations were performed by myself, and I am thus 
able to speak with confidence regarding the circumstances. In 
order to apply M. Chamberland’s explanation to this particular 
case, one would have to suppose that at some time during the 
course of the vaccinations the needle of the hypodermic syringe 
became soiled with an impurity — that is to say, with a microbe 
having pathogenic properties — and that the disease which this acci- 
dental microbe set up at the seat of inoculation gave the anthrax 
bacilli present in the vaccin a better chance of multiplying. Now, 
I had myself the opportunity of examining several of the carcasses of 
the seventeen animals that succumbed after the second vaccination, 
and I can most positively assert that the seat of inoculation did not 
afford any evidence in support of the view that the animals had 
died from a mixed infection, and beyond any doubt no purulent 
oedema was present. 
But in this case there is stiff another objection to the explana- 
tion which M. Chamberland has offered. If the accidents had been 
due to a soiling of the syringe or of the hands of the operator with 
some accidental microbe, one would not have expected a smaller 
proportion of fatalities among the animals which were last vacci- 
nated on that day. But the eleven horses on the farm were vacci- 
nated after the sheep, and with the same syringe, though with a 
