SMALLPOX AMONG SHEEP IN WILTSHIRE. 
741 
by communicating, probably, as intractable and fatal a disorder 
as natural pox, and by consequently exercising as serious an 
influence as the natural disease on breeding, fattening, feed¬ 
ing, and the fleeces. 
Inoculation is, at the best, a choice between two evils. But 
experience has shown that communicated smallpox, except 
under extraordinary and most rare instances of carelessness 
in inoculation, is more tractable in every way and much less 
fatal than the natural disease. The numerous statistics of 
inoculation practised under every circumstance of age, condi¬ 
tion, and season, collected by Professor Delafond, and con¬ 
firmed by his own wide observation, show a mortality not 
exceeding O’5 per cent.—1 in every 200 successfully inoculated 
animals ! Further, his statistics also show that in no instance 
recorded has inoculated smallpox given rise to a disease, even 
under the most unfavorable circumstances of operation and 
care, as fatal as natural epizootic smallpox. Again, the 
inoculated disease, from its mitigated form, gives rise to still 
other advantages. It limits the period when the fattening, 
breeding, and sale of the flock cannot be properly carried out, 
and diminishes the injurious effect upon the fleece. 
In fact, inoculation substitutes a milder, more manageable, 
less fatal, and less injurious disease, for the more formidable 
disorder already present, limits the duration of the infection 
among a flock within the least practicable period, and dimi¬ 
nishes the probability of extension of the malady. 
The adoption of inoculation seems, therefore, to be a remedy 
admirably fitted to control an outbreak such as that which 
would appear to have occurred in Wiltshire, provided that 
the flocks operated on are so situated as to admit of satis¬ 
factory isolation. Under such a condition the remedy 
promises the greatest safeguard from loss, both to the farmer 
and the public. This is no question, we reiterate, of intro¬ 
ducing a disease among hitherto healthy flocks, but of obvi¬ 
ating, as far as practicable, the ill effects of a formidable 
affection already manifested among infected flocks, and when 
separation and isolation have been already tried and failed, or 
observed to be useless from the disease having become manifest 
in many sheep at the same time. 
The results of inoculation on the continent have proved so 
favorable, and the practice is thought to have exercised so 
salutary an influence in obviating and controlling epizootic 
outbreaks of disease, that Professor Delafond has urged the 
importance of making its performance compulsory. Not the 
least of its benefits, it is asserted, have been the limitation 
