56 
M. L . TRASBOT. 
\ 
a simple, easy and certain means of developing the disease in 
its regular form. 
Still, it is not, I believe, the best; first, on account of the diffi¬ 
culty which may be often met, of not having at a given time an 
animal ready to give the material for inoculation, and again, but 
specially, because the horse may also possess the virus of glanders, 
whose introduction into a healthy organism would be followed by 
fatal results: just as physicians have sometimes objected to direct 
vaccinations from arm to arm, for fear of inoculation of the most 
serious sequelse, so the veterinarian must fear the possibility of 
communicating glanders with horse-pox. 
This accident would not be common, it is true, but if it is 
possible, this is reason enough to guard against it; besides, it is easy 
to obtain the vaccine matter of a child, which does not present the 
same danger. I have often used it in my experiments, and it has 
given me, it is superfluous to say, the same result as the pure 
liquid taken directly from the horse. It ought to have been so, 
for the vaccine is in reality the equine virus returning in its proper 
organism. And the certainty that it gives of avoiding the possi¬ 
bility of a glanderous inoculation, renders it preferable in the 
majority of cases. 
Still, one might ask if it is not necessary to know well where 
the vaccine matter comes from, and if there would not be danger 
of its being infected with syphilis. Is syphilis inoculable to the 
horse '? Is it the origin of dourine ? * This is a question which 
cannot be answered to-day. Waiting for the solution of this 
problem, the doubt in which we are left should deter us from ac¬ 
cepting, before transmitting it to the horse, any virus whose 
purity is in any degree doubtful. 
Fora certain number of experiments that I made, I have used 
the vaccine deposited at the Academy of Medicine, by the Com¬ 
mission of Vaccinations, and whose guaranteed quality gave me a 
perfect security. For others, I obtained it from cows and calves 
to which I first gave it. This last is a mean which can be used if 
there is any doubt as to the quality of the virus. This, in passing 
* French name for Maladie dn Co'it. 
