248 
Extracts from British and Foreign Journals. 
ANIMAL VACCINATION. 
We extract the following letters from the British Medical 
Journal : 
Sir,—A letter, signed “Frithiof,” which appeared in a 
recent number of your journal, gave me a clue to an im¬ 
portant paper published by Mr. Ceely, in the tenth volume 
of the f Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical 
Association,’ of which paper I had no previous knowledge. 
A careful study of it has convinced me that I have been in 
error respecting the mutual relations of smallpox and cow-pox. 
I hasten, as in duty and honour bound, to acknowledge my 
mistake, and to apologise to the gentlemen upon whose 
measures on this subject I may have commented. 
Henceforward, I promise not to burden your pages with 
any farther contributions personal to myself. 
I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
Thomas Watson. 
16, Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square, W.; 
Feb. 23rd, 1880. 
Sir, —The letter of Sir Thomas Watson which appeared in 
your issue of to-day will, I venture to think, be hailed with 
immense relief by all your readers. It was not a little em¬ 
barrassing to find supported by so eminent an authority the 
statements which have recently appeared in the public prints 
as to the vaccine lymph raised by Mr. Ceely and Mr, Badcock 
by the variolation of the cow being, in fact, smallpox lymph. 
Sir Thomas Watson has, however, now distinctly withdrawn 
the sanction of his great name to the theory that vaccination 
with variola vaccine lymph is in fact inoculation for the small¬ 
pox; and as the unconscious agent in his conversion, perhaps 
you will allow me to say a few words on the subject. Dr. 
Cameron, M.P., in his letters to the Times } following M. 
Chauveau and his colleagues, says that lymph obtained by 
variolation of the cow “ is not vaccine lymph at all, but 
smallpox lymph capable of being inoculated apparently with 
greater safety to the individual, than ordinary smallpox, but, 
like the mildest inoculated smallpox, capable of propagating 
that disease in its most virulent form by infection/’ In a 
subsequent letter, Dr. Cameron somewhat modified his earlier 
statement by remarking that he sees “ no reason why what 
Chauveau terms vaccino-variolic lymph should not be less 
contagious, as it certainly appears to be more local in its 
effects than smallpox matter taken direct from the human 
