160 INOCULATION FOR PLEURO-PNEUMON1A IN CATTLE. 
serious drawback to the adoption of inoculation, if it should 
hereafter be satisfactorily shown to be a preventive of pleuro- 
pneumonia. 
Deputations have been sent by France and Holland, and 
also by the Belgian Government to Hasselt, to inquire into 
the value of the practice, but up to the time of my visit 
Prussia had not taken this step, nor had Dr. Willems been 
requested to undertake any inoculations in that country. This 
delay may possibly have arisen from the ill consequences of 
Dr. De Saive’s operations producing a want of confidence on 
the part of the Government of Prussia. From a letter which 
I have recently received from Dr. Willems, it appears that 
experiments are being carried out both in France and Holland 
at their respective veterinary schools, and also that Prussia 
is about to follow the example of these countries. 
The Government of Belgium is taking the liveliest interest 
in the matter, and has instituted a series of valuable experi- 
ments, so that ere long it will be satisfactorily proved whether 
inoculation is or is not “a certain and safe preventive 55 of the 
disease. It is a fact long since established in medicine that 
many contagious diseases can be readily 'communicated from 
animal to animal by inoculation, thereby giving immunity 
from an attack of the “ natural 55 disease. The “ inoculated 55 
disease also, as a rule, proves of a less dangerous character 
than the natural, but it is especially to be remembered that 
in their nature both are essentially the same . The advocates, 
however, of the inoculation of cattle, build the success and 
value of their practice on the very opposite basis, because 
they say in no case is disease of the lungs caused by the intro- 
duction of the morbific matter into the system. Were disease 
of the lungs to follow 7 , it w’ould be at once fatal to the practice, 
because its effects being made manifest within these organs 
could not be controlled, and w 7 ould assuredly lead on to death. 
The local disease caused by the inoculation, we are told, is of 
the same nature as that of the lungs of affected cattle ; but it 
is said always to remain localized , because artificially introduced 
into the organism. About tw r o per cent, of the inoculated 
animals die, while a far greater proportion suffer from ulcer- 
ative and gangrenous inflammation of their tails, notwith- 
standing w hich the lungs, the locale of the natural disease , we 
are assured, never suffer. If experience proves this to be 
true, it must be regarded as a new fact in medicine. 
We believe each virus, no matter how 7 introduced, natu- 
rally or artificially, into the system, to have its own especial 
seat in the organism. Thus the virus of glanders produces 
glanders, and the same may be said of farcy, small -pox, cow T - 
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