INOCULATION FOR THE LUNG PLAGUE, ETC. 
371 
As an illustration of liow inoculation works, even with those 
who adopt it by choice, and are anxiously desirous to have it suc¬ 
ceed, a case now transpiring at East Williston, Queens Co., N. Y., 
may be here quoted. In May last, after the reprehensible action 
of the New York Legislature had compelled the suspension of all 
effective sanitary work, and invited a renewed spread of the plague 
over districts that had been cleared, a cow was taken from the 
west end of Long Island into the herd of Mr. Richard H. Robbins, 
East Williston. She sickened, and was killed September 9th. 
Seven or eight other cows having suffered, inoculation was resorted 
to; but the inoculated cattle were kept in a field, separated by a 
fence only from several other herds, the property of neighboring 
farmers. Time will tell what the results will be. Those who 
have had anything to do with the quarantining of cattle on the 
parole of their owner, know how often slips are made and contact 
is allowed between the stock that are nominally secluded and those 
of others. The danger thus arising in a limited number of cases, 
under the process of stamping out by the sacrifice of the sick, 
would be increased a hundred fold by inoculation, though this 
were confined to infected localities only. 
But the increase of such risks implies a corresponding increase 
of infected places and of the demand for disinfection ; and as a 
certain number of outbreaks are always secreted, it would be 
practically impossible to carry the disinfectants along every chan¬ 
nel of the stream of contagion. 
Inoculation for Lung Plague not the Counterpart of Vacci¬ 
nation for Small-Pox. — When people are informed that a mild 
and non-fatal disease can be produced by inoculation for lung 
plague, they naturally conclude that they have here the exact 
counterpart of the vaccination practiced on man, and they give a 
favorable verdict without further consideration. But this is al¬ 
together fallacious. In vaccination the virus used and reproduced 
*on the human skin is not that of small-pox, but of the mild and 
harmless cow-pox; and no matter how many non-vaocinated per¬ 
sons may come in contact with the subject of the operation, none 
can be thereby exposed to contract small-pox. Cow-pox may be 
contracted in this way, but smallpox^ never. 
