1 Dec., 1897.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 477 
The following on the subject of inoculation for rinderpest at the Cape of 
Good Hope will prove interesting :— 
Dr. Alexander Edington, Bacteriologist to the Government of Cape 
Colony, claims to have invented an effective preventive to rinderpest. He 
found that the blood of animals affected with the disease, when treated with 
- citric acid and kept long enough to ensure the death of the contagium, con- 
ferred immunity upon animals injected with it. Bile, treated in the same way, 
with half its quantity of glycerine mixed with it, acted equally well. Animals 
injected with 20 cubie centimetres of either preparation proved immune 
from infection in a great majority of cases, when virulent blood from animals 
suffering from rinderpest was afterwards injected. Dr. Edington, after 
experimenting on a small scale, with perfect success, practised his preventive 
method upon a large number of large herds, and the highest mortality in any 
herd has been a little over 3 per cent. 
Dr. Edington claims for his mixture three great advantages— 
(a) That the disease cannot be spread by the use of glycerinated gall. 
(6) That a great economy is effected by the use of glycerine: all galls 
being available. : 
(c) That the mixture will keep. 
The Agricultural Journal of the Cape of Good Hope, commenting on 
these claims, disagrees with the first claim as being unsatisfactory and 
certainly not novel, as glycerine was abandoned by Dr. Koch as useless. 
With respect to (4), an increase of the dose of bile and glycerine from 10 
c.c: of gall and 5 c.c. of glycerine to 24 ¢c.c. of the mixture, containing 16 c.c. 
of bile, does away with the plea of economy. ‘The third advantage (c) is 
undoubtedly true, as the mixture will retain its extremely feeble minimising 
power for a considerable time. 
