INOCULATION FOR PLEURO-PN EUMONIA IN CATTLE. 159 
quickly filled up by new purchases. 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 nume- 
rous 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 
hygienic 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 inocu- 
lated 108 animals belonging to his father, not one of which, 
it is said, contracted pleuro-pneumonia, although all were ex- 
posed to its contagion. Fifty other animals, also the property 
of M. Willems sen., were left ^inoculated during the same 
time, and of these, 1 7 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 prac- 
tice, as more animals 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 publicity being given to the subject, Dr. 
De Saive wrote to the Governments of France, Holland, and 
Prussia, offering to inoculate the cattle of these several coun- 
tries 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 pro- 
vinces 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 morti- 
fication, and others being destroyed by constitutional irritation, 
that the Government, hearing of these disasters, ordered the 
inoculations to be forthwith discontinued. No doubt very 
many of these untoward results were caused by the serous 
exudations selected for the inoculations being of bad quality, 
and likewise by the manner the operation was performed. It 
remains, however, to be proved that, even with the greatest 
care, the casualties may not be so numerous as to offer a 
