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1 Ocr., 1897.] QUEENSEAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 335 
found to be covered with stringy-like fibrinous matter, white and blood-stained. 
This is the fibrin, and its removal prevents the blood thickening, clotting, or 
coagulating. The process of whisking and removing the fibrin is known as 
defibrination. Defibrinated blood is that which has been so treated. The 
blood is afterwards strained through a piece of clean linen or calico into 
another clean bottle, and is ready for use. Allowing 5 ¢.c., which is equal 
to one teaspoonful, for one bullock, one pint of defibrinated blood would be 
adequate to inoculate 120 bullocks. No more blood should be taken from an 
animal and defibrinated than can be used in four hours. When kept longer 
the blood is apt to become contaminated with various kinds of bacteria which 
are floating about in the atmosphere of the stockyard or shed, or other foreign 
matter, which, injected into an animal, might either produce blood-poisoning 
or an abscess. 
It is advisable that, as dust is certain to arise in stockyards, the mouth of 
the bottle containing the defibrinated blood should be kept covered with a piece 
of clean linen or calico, and it should be kept in a cool shady place. ‘To 
minimise, as far as possible, the risk of contamination, the following precaution 
may be adopted :— 
“The operator puts about 2 oz. of blood from the stock bottle into 
& small wide-mouthed bottle, which is also covered with clean linen or calico. 
This smaller bottle is for actual work of inoculation, and should be filled up as 
required.” 
Inoculation should be performed without delay. The animals to be inocu- 
lated should be placed in a crush as many as possible at a time, so that the 
Work may be carried on quickly. The syringe now comes into use, and every 
attention should he paid to its cleanliness. In order to make the piston-rod work 
freely in the cylinder, it is necessary to apply a little vaseline to the leather 
or rubber washers. In the latest form of syringe, there is a very ingenious 
device for tightening or slackening the washers of the piston-rod without 
removing the latter from the cylinder. 
A word or two of description here may be useful. It is in principle like a 
squirt or garden syringe, but should have the very latest improvements. On 
the piston-rods of some kinds, and on the glass cylinders of others, will be 
noticed a row of figures above a transverse line. The space between each line 
indicated is a cubic centimetre—that is to say, when the piston-rod has been 
Withdrawn till the figure 8 is visible, then there are 8 cubic centimetres 
of space in the cylinder of the syringe. As 5 cubic centimetres are necessary 
for the inoculation of an animal, the needle should be thrust through the linen 
cover into the small bottle of blood, and the piston-rod of the syringe with- 
drawn till the figure 5 appears outside the cylinder. With the syringe 
there is usually supplied one or more hollow needles, each having a metal 
Socket which fits on to the nipple-point of the metal protector of the glass 
cylinder. 
_ As the animals shrink and move suddenly from the needle when thrust 
into them, it is very apt to get broken, and the use of a very simple contrivance 
is recommended to save the needles. This consists of about 3 inches of thick 
walled India-rubber tube, one end of which fits close on the nipple of the 
syringe, while the other makes the connection by going over the socket of the 
needle, thus giving free play to the syringe when blood is being injected into 
an animal, and the operator has more freedom in using it. The tubing should 
be 3-inch in diameter, and the walls so thick that the aperture is only 
y-inch in diameter. Thick tubing does not kink and stop the flow of 
blood. The instrument, having been made ready by fitting on the tube and 
needle, is charged with blood by plunging the needle through the cloth into the 
little bottle and the withdrawal of the piston. Only one dose ata time should 
be used. A little fold of loose skin behind the shoulder of the animal to be 
inoculated is lifted from the ribs with the left hand. The needle is then 
plunged obliquely about an inch through the skin into the loose or subcutaneous 
tissue, thereafter the piston is pressed slowly down, and the blood forced into 
Ww 
