194 
ANIMAL VACCINATION. 
see to it afterwards that these officers attend effectively to 
their duties. The New South Wales system is self-supporting, 
satisfactory, and effective. The Victorian system involves a 
heavy annual charge on the State, is notoriously incompetent, 
and in every respect productive of the greatest dissatis¬ 
faction.— The Leader , Melbourne. 
ANIMAL VACCINATION. 
It is satisfactory to find that the subject of vaccination 
by improved means will be carefully considered by the Local 
Government Department, which has now been made ac¬ 
quainted with the wishes of the British Medical Association 
on the question. At an interview which the representatives 
of this society had with Mr. Sclater-Booth yesterday, Feb. 9, 
certain suggestions were made in accordance with the con¬ 
clusions recently arrived at in a conference on Animal Vac¬ 
cination ; and these suggestions were received by the Presi¬ 
dent of the Board with an assurance that they should have 
his most careful and anxious attention. 
It appears from what w r as said at the Conference, and re¬ 
peated yesterday, that one of the chief objections urged by 
Anti-vaccinators to the enforcement of the Act is the fact 
that the lymph, with which children are vaccinated by the 
public vaccinator, is not taken from the calf or cow, and is 
not, therefore, always free from the suspicion of impurity. 
Whether the fears or doubts entertained by these people are 
well founded or not may be an open question, but no one 
will deny that if they constitute a real grievance in the im¬ 
agination of those who are affected by the Act, it would be 
desirable, if possible, to get rid of the ground of complaint. 
The Anti-vaccinators are not a body of which the Local 
Government Board or any one else has great reason to be 
afraid; but if one of the chief arguments upon which they 
rely could be cut away from them without much difficulty it 
would obviously be conducive to peace and quiet to do so 
immediately. Similarly, although the idea of certain poor 
people that in having their children vaccinated they are ex¬ 
posing them to noisome infections may have little or no 
foundation in reason, it would yet be worth some trouble to 
take a step which would remove that idea. 
The Association, representing, as it claims to do, no less than 
90,000 practitioners, is of opinion that, by adopting in all 
cases at central stations the vaccine lymph derived from the 
calf, this desirable result would be secured; and such an 
opinion is certainly of much value and importance. One of 
