244 
GEORGE FLEMING. 
this only engenders small-pox, neither more nor less, just as does 
the variolous virus obtained direct from the human species. The 
eruption is sometimes discrete and benignant, sometimes confluent 
and serious—at times normal, at other times abnormal. But in 
all cases the disease preserves its property of infecting healthy 
individuals by miasmatic contagion (infection); and its virns, 
even when taken from an almost absolutely local eruption, never 
gives more, in bovine animals, than the papular eruption which 
ordinary human variola produces in these creatures. 
The Academy of feciences commissioners conclude their 
verdict as follows :—“ The experiments, the results of which have 
been just mentioned—experiments as remarkable by their num¬ 
ber as by their distinctness (nettete) and concordance—appear, 
therefore, proper to solve the debatable points in view of which 
they were instituted. In establishing that vaccinia and variola, 
notwithstanding the features which assimilate them in animals as 
in man, are, nevertheless, totally independent of each other; that 
their viruses form two distinct individualities; that the two 
affections thus constitute two different, immutable species, which 
cannot be transformed one into the other; that, consequently, to 
seek to produce vaccinia from variola would be to pursue a 
dangerous chimera, which would revive all the dangers of inocu¬ 
lation of by-gone days—in establishing facts of such great im¬ 
portance, the experiments directed by M. Chauveau have rendered 
an incontestable service to science and to medical practice.” 
Such was the opinion expressed by the representatives of the 
Academy of Sciences with regard to the Lyons experiments, and 
after reading the account of them, and knowing well the very 
trustworthy character and great professional ability of M. 
Chauveau, I think no doubt whatever can be entertained as to 
the justness of that opinion. And, besides, it must be remem¬ 
bered that an Italian medical commission, which carried on 
similar experiments and investigations at Turin, from 1871 to 
1874, came to the same conclusion that Chauveau did—that 
human small-pox cannot be converted into cow-pox when the 
virus is transferred to bovines, but always preserves its original 
character. 
