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by pathological changes in the viscera identical with those
found in fatal human scarlatina, Professor Axe is silent on the
point. The disease, " eruption of the teats," he tells us, is spoken
of among the dairy-farmers (but can it be the same disease ?) as
"cow-pox"; and, while admitting that it is transmissible to
man, by inoculation, in the form of vesicles ([vaxinia), he says
that it is "incapable of communicating scarlatina or other
epidemic fever."
Thus the subject was left at the date of my last
Annual Report, but being one of undeniable importance
to the agricultural world and to the general public, a
further investigation has since been made, at the instance of
the Agricultural Department of the Privy Council, by Professor
Crookshank, of the Bacteriological Laboratory, King's College,
who has arrived at the conclusion that the bovine disease, of
which he has seen numerous examples, is " cow-pox," of which,
he states, there are spurious varieties which afford no protection
against small-pox. As the outcome of his investigations,
which are described in the principal medical journals of 17th
December, 1887, he states his conviction that the disease he has
investigated is identical with the " Hendon cow-disease " ; that
this was not scarlatina in the cow ; ihat the milk of cows
affected with the disease does not produce scarlet fever in man ;
and that in the Hendon milk " the source of infection was from
some hitherto unascertained human source." At a discussion
at the Pathological Society on Professor Crookshank's paper
(reported in the medical journals of December 24th), Dr.
Klein took up the view that the disease which the author of the
paper had investigated (presumably cow-pox) was not the
" Hendon cow disease." It is not probable that the matter will
end here. Meanwhile, what is of present interest is the fact
that Professor Crookshank appears to have lighted on a
case of " the true Jennerian cow-pox " transmitted from the
cow to man, the lymph of which, moreover, has " produced in
calves typical vaccinia so that we may hope to have