EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
661 
It is satisfactory to know that the advocates of the spon¬ 
taneous origin of the disease have little or no ground for 
their theory in its spread from the original site. Most of 
the facts can be easily accounted for, and we are not without 
hope that a satisfactory clue may yet be obtained to its 
appearance at Allington. The great questions of its sup¬ 
pression, and the lessening of its fatality, have been warmly 
discussed, and occupied the columns of both town and 
country newspapers. It is not difficult to see that party 
spirit, and professional rivalry, have exercised no small 
influence in these discussions. At the right time we intend 
to have our reply, being content for the present to let 
things remain as they are. We desire not to be sensation 
creators, nor to have our professional fame endangered by 
hasty conclusions. In 1848, we had to fight the great 
battle of vaccination as a preventive of variola ovina , now 
inoculation forms the ground of contention. The opponents 
of inoculation argue as though we cast aside everything 
else, and some would even take credit for advocating as a 
new discovery, the propriety of removal, isolation, or killing 
of infected animals. In our work on this disease published 
in 1848, we thus wrote : “ the first thing which should be 
done is, to separate the infected from the apparently healthy 
sheep, and to place the latter at such a distance as to prevent 
the liability of their being contaminated by subsequent 
infection. Under no circumstances should this precaution 
be neglected, for various degrees of susceptibility to receive 
the poison exist among the animals, and consequently many 
may be saved an attack. These sheep should also be 
inspected daily, and any of them which show the slightest 
svmptom of ill-health should forthwith be taken a wav. We 
cannot give a better proof of the advantage of such a pro¬ 
ceeding than by adverting to the outbreak on Mr. StathanTs 
farm,”—the original place of the appearance of the disease—> 
“ where, notwithstanding that all the sheep lived together 
for nearly a fortnight after the disease occurred, fort 3 r -three 
out of 256 escaped entirely by the rigid adoption of the 
above method.” 
The arrestation of the malady, however, does not rest at 
this time on individual exertions. The government has 
