INOCULATION FOR THE LUNG PLAGUE, ETC. 
368 
off by the various free surfaces of the body, and, above all, by 
the lungs. If in the seat of inoculation only (the tail), they would 
still escape from the raw surface, as the infection is spread from 
the pustules of small-pox, with the scurfy products of the skin in 
scarlet fever, or with the liquid products of the open sores in 
farcy. It is true that the amount of the virus scattered from the 
tail of the inoculated animal is incomparably less than that exhaled 
with every breath by an animal which has contracted the disease 
in the lungs ; and this difference has led to the fallacy that con¬ 
tagion cannot be spread from the inoculated. Yet it must be 
plain to all that the inoculators are here placed on the horns of a 
dilemma—either the diseased germs inoculated in the tail do not 
reproduce themselves there, and cannot, therefore, protect the 
subject against the disease, or they do grow and increase in the 
seat of inoculation, protect the system of the inoculated animal 
against the assaults of the disease, and expose all inoculated and 
susceptible animals in the vicinity to contract the disease in its 
fatal form in the lungs, by reason of the virulent matter given off 
by the surface of the inoculation sore. 
But we are not left to mere inference in deciding this most 
important question. Even the strong advocates of inoculation now 
testify to the occasional communication of the disease by the in¬ 
oculated animal. In the quotation above made, it is admitted 
that the disease can be conveyed from the inoculation sore by re¬ 
inoculation on a sound animal. But as the virus can be carried 
in the air, as evinced by its conveyance from the lungs of one an¬ 
imal to those of another, in the ordinary mode of infection, the 
same must be accepted as true of the same virus when developed 
in the tail; and the writer, who denies contagion from the inocu¬ 
lated wound, and yet claims that successful inoculation can be 
made from it, condemns himself,and is put hopelessly out of court. 
Much more consistent are the statements of Mr. Watson, and 
they should carry the greater force in that he had a more exten¬ 
sive experience with inoculation in Australia and New Zealand, 
having had, in the latter colony, the superintendence of a station 
with 10,000 head of cattle : 
“ Inoculated cattle convey the contagion to those which are not 
