EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
57 
tagious diseases. The only question which remains in 
reality is one of degree. Does inoculation confer any 
amount of protection, and, if so, to what extent ? 
Again, we appeal to facts within our own knowledge. 
Inoculated cattle, we repeat, have taken the disease na- 
turally in many instances. A considerable number of in- 
oculated animals resist the infection, so do a large per- 
centage, in many cases, of animals which are not inoculated. 
In the same shed we have seen inoculated cows attacked 
while others left uninoculated have remained free of the 
disease. 
After the performance of inoculation, pleuro-pneumonia 
sometimes ceases ; so it does very often when the diet is 
altered or medical treatment is had recourse to, or disin- 
fectants are employed. 
Mr. Priestman has been very successful in arresting the 
course of the disease by the use of carbolic acid, and, we 
believe, prefers it to inoculation, which he at one time ex- 
tensively practised. Under all the circumstances of the 
case, considering the very irregular course which the disease 
takes at different times, and in various places, what can 
be expected of a number of experiments undertaken by 
persons imperfectly acquainted with the subject, unaccus- 
tomed to the critical examination of evidence, and incapable 
of drawing correct conclusions from facts which they can 
only dimly observe ? At best an addition to the mass of , 
crude unsatisfactory evidence which already exists is alone to 
be expected. 
We understand that it is proposed in Cheshire to inoculate 
certain animals on a farm and leave the rest ; an experi- 
ment which has been performed repeatedly with results which 
have been adduced in proof of the total failure of the 
operation by its opponents and of its success by its advocates. 
Again, it is contemplated, we believe, to test the 
matter in Norfolk by inoculating some thirty or more 
animals on a farm where two or three cattle have died 
of pleuro-pneumonia. The experiment, however, is to 
be made contingent upon the occurrence of another at- 
tack. To the pathologist there would be something infi- 
nitely amusing in these arrangements if there were not 
