OF ANIMAL VACCINATION PRECEDED BY Considerations on Vaccination in General. BY DR. E. WARLOMONT, Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium; Founder of the TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY ARTHUR J HARRIES, M. D., Senior Assistant Physician and Joint Lecturer to St. John's Hospital for WITH AN APPENDIX, SHOWING THE RESULTS OF RE-VACCINATION AND THE COMPARA- 0787 INTRODUCTION BY THE PUBLISHERS. Dr. Warlomont, the author of this monograph, has so long occupied the position of a leader in the movement to establish animal vaccination as the true method for securing protection against small-pox, that we are sure the medical profession and the public will be grateful to us for reproducing his work in a form available for general circulation. We are the more interested in obtaining for Dr. Warlomont, a hearing adequate to the importance of his facts, because in the search for the best virus for propagating in our own establishment, we ascertained that the vaccine bureau of the Belgian Government, of which Dr. Warlomont was the founder, and for a long time the official head, furnished the best vaccine to be procured in Europe. In this work, Dr. Warlomont presents an admirable resumé of the existing knowledge on the subject of vaccine, and he supplements the whole with the results of his own vast observation. No branch of the subject has failed to receive enlightened consideration, and, although he seeks to establish the superiority of the animal over humanized lymph, he exhibits no prejudices against the latter, and only pronounced for the greater utility of the former, after a rigorous analysis of all the facts bearing on the question. Having satisfied ourselves of the superior excellence of the animal vaccine furnished by the Belgian Bureau, we dispatched thither a special agent-Dr. Sajous, a 3 INTRODUCTION BY THE PUBLISHERS. physician in high standing in Philadelphia-with instructions to procure a supply of the virus, and transport it with all the sanitary precautions necessary. Dr. Sajous executed this mission, the more successfully, since besides his professional qualifications, he is the Belgian Consul of Philadelphia, and had, therefore, official relations with the Belgian Government. The result has justified our efforts to secure lymph of the highest excellence. The virus has proved to be properly active and to produce vesicles which conform in all respects to the typical standard. Our vaccine propagating establishment is admirably situated. The estate, Rokeby, is a farm of several hundred acres, in Chester county, Pennsylvania, a fertile, rolling country, healthy, and adapted to grazing. There are no great herds in the vicinity, and the cattle of the farmers have been free from epidemic and contagious maladies. The buildings have been constructed with attention to every detail. There are two stables, each of which may contain with suitable regard to the necessary airspace, forty heifers. They are lighted by large windows, kept at a uniform temperature by artificial heat when required by the state of the external temperature, lined with hard wood, and equipped with capacious stalls, mangers, drains, and every appliances which an enlightened experience can suggest. Every detail of administration is carried out by skilled attendants. The heifers are carefully selected and their sanitary condition assured by Dr. Zuill, Professor of Veterinary Medicine and Obstetrics, in the University of Pennsylvania, and the general hygiene and the scientific work of the establishment are under the supervision of Dr. Bartholow, Professor of Materia Medica, General Therapeutics and Hygiene, in the Jefferson Medical College, of Philadelphia. In fact, nothing is wanting to make our establishment for propagating vaccine lymph, what it professes to be, a model of its kind, without any superior anywhere, and unequalled in this country. We purpose to maintain the excellence of our product by careful attention to every detail, and by the adoption of every improvement suggested by our own experience, or coming from any part of the world. The readers of this work are invited to see for themselves how nearly we conform to the ideal of its author, and how we maintain the traditions of the Belgian Bureau of Vaccine. Our establishment is always open to the scrutiny of physicians and sanitarians, interested in its objects. We realize, as all do who have had occasion to inform themselves, how important it is to have a vaccine propagating establishment conducted with that scientific knowledge and practical skill, which hitherto have been found only in the official bureaus of the European States. In the absence of governmental control, private resources must accomplish the same end, and attain to the same completeness, both in the machinery and in the scientific character of the work done. We believe that we have accomplished this arduous and important task. |