114 
E. SALMON. 
In the April number of The American Veterinary Review 
Dr. Liautard adds some facts which were unaccountably omitted 
in Dr. Grerth’s report. It appears that the vaccine was furnished 
by Dr. Liautard, who obtained it from M. Pasteur. The vaccine 
was prepared about September 25 and was not used until Novem¬ 
ber 2, an interval of over live weeks. It is well known that vac¬ 
cines of all kinds rapidly deteriorate with age, and M. Pasteur in¬ 
formed Dr. Liautard simply that he had known the vaccine to 
keep good for five weeks. It is evident, therefore, that the keep¬ 
ing qualities of this vaccine have not been tested very accurately, 
and that while it may remain active for five weeks it may also 
become worthless in that time. Dr. Liautard states that he fur. 
nished the vaccine not with the design of testing the value of the 
process, but of proving the efficiency of the vaccine matter after 
it had been imported from Europe. He thinks that the success 
of the operation was hardly to he expected, jmd he considers it an 
error, to express it very mildly, to conclude from this experiment 
that the inoculation theory is wrong. 
IVe coincide entirely in the opinion that an exaggerated im¬ 
portance has been attached to the Nebraska experiments. We fail 
to find any evidence of that strict scientific accuracy which is 
claimed for them, and we are very certain that the conclusions go 
far beyond anything that can be legitimately demonstrated from 
the reliable part of the observations. 
It seems to us, however, that Dr. Liautard’s conclusion is as 
little justified by any known evidence as is that of Dr. Gerth, 
which he criticises when he writes: “If the cold logic of fact (a 
single fact) seems to disprove the theory in Nebraska, what shall 
be said of the same logic of facts (in the plural) which prove it to 
be almost a certain success, and almost the only prophylactic 
measure against hog cholera in most of the countries of Europe, 
whenever the process has been repeated with fresh vaccine ? ” He 
has furnished no evidence and we have failed to find any in the 
literature of America or Europe, which establishes the theory on 
any reasonable basis, that the disease which Pasteur is vaccinat¬ 
ing for is identical with the hog cholera of America; and it 
would appear that the use of the American term, hog cholera, in 
