322 
GEORGE FLEMING 
From what I have now stated, I think there are few who will 
continue to maintain that human variola and cow-pox are one and 
the same disease— i. e., cow-pox being merely small-pox trans¬ 
ferred to the cow; or that there is any relationship or resemblance 
between them, except in so far that they are eruptive, run a cer¬ 
tain course, generally attack the organism only once in a lifetime, 
and are antagonistic to each other. It would be strange, indeed, 
if the virus of small-pox could be so changed that, by being passed 
only once through the system of the cow, it should completely 
lose its identity and never regain it, no matter how long it might 
afterwards be cultivated in its native soil; and that, while before 
it could only be successfully transferred with the utmost difficulty 
to bovine animals, and perished in two or three removes, it should 
be capable, after its transmutation, of not only preserving its new 
characters of peculiar localized eruption and non-infectiousness, 
but also retain all its potency after endless transmissions through 
human, bovine, equine, and perhaps other animal species. “ The 
poor unfortunate cow” is certainly not the victim of human vari¬ 
ola, as was asserted with more sentiment than accuracy at the 
conference, by a speaker who, nevertheless, confessed he had not 
succeeded in his attempts to produce vaccinia from small-pox. 
Taking up this position, and supporting it by ample evidence, 
the knowledge we possess of virulent diseases in general, as well 
as the fact that the most extensive, careful, and exhaustive expe¬ 
riments by the ablest pathologists have failed in transmuting vari¬ 
ola into vaccinia,* I may be asked how we are to account for the 
* Mr. Ceely himself affords us almost conclusive evidence as to non-identity 
between human variola and vaccinia, iu the extreme difficulty, according to his 
own showing, with which the former could be transferred to bovines, and the 
remarkable facility with which the latter was propagated by the milkers. He 
says that in December, 1838, on a large dairy farm where there were three milk¬ 
ing sheds, vaccinia first appeared iutbe home or lower shed. The cows in this 
shed beiug troublesome, the milker from the upper shed, after milking his own 
cows, came to assist in this for several days, morning and evening, when in about 
a week some of his own cows began to exhibit the disease. It appears that, 
having chapped hands, he neglected washing them for three or four days 
at a time, and thus seemed to convey the disease from one shed to another. Dur¬ 
ing the progress of the disease through this shed, one of the affected cows, which 
had been assailed by its fellows, was removed to the middle shed, where all 
