ON INOCULATION DURING THE PREVALENCE OF 
EPIDEMIC TYPHOID DISEASES. 
By Professor Delafond, Royal Veterinary School , Alfort. 
[To whatever cause it may be traced,— and there is no one of 
greater power than the improved management of our domesticated 
animals, — the fact is undoubted, that serious epidemic diseases 
are far more rare among them than they were previous to the 
establishment of agricultural and veterinary schools. More than 
eighty years have passed since the murrain of cattle has assumed 
the murderous character which enabled it to desolate whole 
countries ; and nearly centuries since our sheep were more than 
decimated by it. The epidemics of horses also, although teazing 
and fatal enough, are, beyond comparison, more manageable 
than they were in the times of our fathers. The cause of this 
immunity has never been demonstratively proved ; and the period 
may again arrive when we shall anxiously look around us for 
some means to arrest the destructive plague. It will not then 
be lost time, nor will it be uninteresting, to inquire into the 
actual efficacy and value of certain means of prevention or cure. 
Among them is the inoculation of the sound animal with the 
virus of the prevailing malady ; and with the hope, and one that 
has not been disappointed, of producing a modified disease, of 
far milder character, and that shall also afford an immunity, 
for a certain period at least, from the attack of the epidemic. 
Professor Delafond takes up the question of inoculation with 
the matter of typhoid fever. We do not agree with him in all 
his statements ; much less can we enter into the personal feeling 
which seems to prompt his attack on the Ex-Professor Dupuy. 
We certainly think with him, that there is little or no necessary 
analogy between the typhoid diseases of cattle and their va- 
riolous ones. The all-important question is the efficacy of ino- 
culation in subduing the power and repelling the attack of the 
former; and every thing else we should have rejected, had he 
not, in his attack on M. Dupuy’s analogy, stated a host of 
important facts, nowhere, so far as we know, collected in so 
small a compass.] Y. 
The practice of inoculating the human being with the matter 
of small-pox, in the sixteenth century*, and the advantages 
that were derived from it, suggested to some English practitioners 
* It was not until the very close of the 17tli century that rumours of the 
practice of this operation at Constantinople reached the west of Europe. 
The first printed account of it, by Dr. Timoni, bears the date of 1713. — Y. 
VOL. X. 3 B 
