138 Annual Report for 1905 of Royal Veterinary College. 
of this failure has been dealt with in the Annual Keport for 
the two previous years. The measures enforced against 
anthrax have proved inadequate because a large proportion of 
the outbreaks have no connection with antecedent cases on the 
same farm or premises, but are caused by the use of con- 
taminated cake, meal, and other articles of diet imported from 
countries in which anthrax is much more prevalent than it is 
in Great Britain. The provisions of the Anthrax Order, 
insisting on prompt notification of the disease and proper 
treatment of the carcasses of animals that have died from it, are 
admirable as means for preventing the spread of infection 
where the disease has broken out, and from that point of view 
they are in most cases quite effectual, as is proved by the fact 
that in the great majority of outbreaks the losses do not exceed 
one animal. There are, however, no practicable measures by 
which the seeds of future outbreaks, in the shape of infected 
foreign food materials, can be prevented from entering the 
country, and there is therefore no reason to expect that there 
will be any sensible decline in the number of outbreaks in the 
future. 
The fact that the number of animals attacked in outbreaks 
of anthrax in this country is usually very small (less than two 
on an average), to a large extent deprives the methods of 
protective inoculation which have been utilised on a large scale 
in some foreign countries of their importance, for when a 
farmer has every reason to believe that an outbreak is at an 
end with the loss of the first animal, he cannot be expected to 
submit the rest of his stock to an operation which involves 
some expense and trouble, and is itself not altogether free from 
risk. Nevertheless, it appears to be desirable to call attention 
here to a new method of vaccinating cattle and other farm 
animals against anthrax, which has some distinct advantages 
over the one devised by the late M. Pasteur and almost 
exclusively employed hitherto. In this new method the 
animal which it is desired to protect receives a subcutaneous 
injection of so-called “ protective serum.” In order to obtain 
a supply of this serum an animal (preferably a horse) is first 
vaccinated with an attenuated or weakened culture of the 
anthrax bacillus, and after that it has injected into its body, at 
intervals, gradually increasing quantities of a virulent culture 
of the same organism. 
After some months of this treatment the blood-serum of the 
horse acquires protective properties, that is to say, if even a 
small quantity of it be injected into an ox or other animal the 
latter is for a time rendered immune against anthrax. The 
chief advantages of this method of vaccinating against anthrax 
are (1) that the operation is practically devoid of danger, and 
