299 
Translations and Reviews of Continental 
Veterinary Journals, 
By W. Ernes, M.R.C.V.S., London. 
Clinique Veterinairey January, 1863. 
ORIGIN OF COWPOX. 
(Continued fromp, 250.) 
I AM not affected by the two objections: 1st. That the 
lancet by w^hich the cow was inoculated might have been 
used previously in a case of vaccination, and consequently 
have inoculated a remnant of the virus of cowpox by which 
it was tainted, at the same time as the matter taken from the 
mare was inoculated. 2nd. That the heifer was on the eve 
of contracting the cowpox spontaneously, it being in a state 
of incubation at the time when the inoculation with the 
matter taken from the mare was performed, and that conse¬ 
quently the appearance of the malady might only have been a 
coincidence of this incubation, I do not believe these ob¬ 
jections serious. Concerning the latter, w^ould it not be very 
strange that M. Lafosse should have precisely fallen in the 
selection for his experiment, on a cow having the cowpox in 
a state of incubation at the time he submitted her to the 
process of inoculation, and that in a district where the 
cowpox did not prevail at the time, does not habitually 
prevail, and is not known to have prevailed for a long time 
past; and that it should have been exactly at that period of 
its incubation, so that the time of its evolution in pustules 
should be equal to that which separates ordinarily that of 
the incubation of the cow'pox from the pustules which are 
the consequence ? And finally this coincidence is still more 
strange from the circumstance that the pustules of this spon¬ 
taneous cowpox only appeared, as the report of M. Bousquet 
states, on the spots where the punctures were made for the 
inoculation. The objection about the lancet which might 
have been used, at a time more or less remote, for the purpose 
of vaccination is not more admissible; in the first place it 
was taken from the case of instruments of M. Lafosse who 
is a veterinary professor, and does not vaccinate. But I will 
go farther and suppose that the lancet had been used eight 
