57
Lymph.
13. Our lymph was of very good quality throughout the year, and especially so
during the latter half, when human lymph of first trans-
mission from the cow gave us vesicles scarcely equalled,
except perhaps, by the vesicles we were in the habit of seeing during the first three
months after the introduction of animal vaccination here. Indeed my experience of
the past 15 months has shown me that the first and even second transmission of human
lymph is if anything more active and energetic in its effects in the human subject, and
produces larger and fuller vesicles than the lymph taken direct from the cow. In
former years it was constantly observed, that during the hot and rainy seasons vaccine
lymph here showed a great tendency to degenerate, and that sometimes to such an
extent as almost to put a stop to our work, and make us helplessly dependent on the
supplies of lymph from Europe and the Mofussil. Nothing of the sort occurred
during the whole year under report. This better state of things is solely owing to
animal vaccination.
Animal Vaccination.
14. Flushed with recent success, success that for the time appeared perfect in
every respect, I wrote in my last annual report, in exultant
tones about our animal vaccine operations, notwithstanding
the warning note in the shape of failure of operations in some of the heifers supplied
by the Municipal authorities. I was, however, doomed to sad, though as it afterwards
proved, temporary, disappointment, which, while it lasted, made me extremely anxious
about our ultimate success. Heifer after heifer proved a failure. Not that the opera-
tion did not take well in the calf—many a time the operation seemed to be a complete
success so far as the calf was concerned, the vesicles appeared to be genuine, and gave
lymph that to all appearance was every thing that could be desired, and yet when in-
troduced into the human system it failed to excite the disease there whatever the care
and attention with which it was inserted
On two different occasions Dr. Blanc pro-
cured for me supplies of animal lymph from Dr. Warlomont of Brussels, from which
animal vaccination was re-established, but still there often was a strange peculiarity
about the results. What appeared to be good lymph-yielding genuine vesicles, failed
to produce any effect on the human subject; whilst indifferent looking vesicles gave
us vesicles in the human subject of the perfect Jennerian type. A small heifer about
three months old was inoculated on the 16th January 1871, with fresh fifth-day lymph.
The skin became over-irritated after the operation and a kind of exanthematous inflam-
mation attacked the whole shaved surface. By the fifth-day the inflammation had quite
subsided, and the epidermis was found pealing off. Of the many punctures made, only
12 or 13 had taken here and there, but the vesicles were quite indifferent in appearance.
Small-pox was at that time raging fearfully at Mazagon. We had no other lymph
in any quantity at our command. In this emergency, knowing that animal vaccine
virus, if it did no good never did any harm, I thought it expedient to try this lymph,
indifferent though the vesicles appeared, and though I must say I had scarcely any
hopes of its succeeding. Some 44 children were vaccinated, and when I visited the
place on the 5th day, to my surprise out of 27 children that I then saw, the vaccina-